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THROUGH THE YEAR WITH THOREAU 




SITE OF THOREAU'S HOUSE AT WALDEN POND 



THROUGH THE YEAR 
WITH THOREAU 

BY 

HERBERT W. GLEASON 

SKETCHES 
OF NATURE FROM THE WRITINGS OF 

Henry DyThoreau 

WITH CORRESPONDING PHOTOGRAPHIC 
ILLUSTRATIONS 



V-% 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

The Riverside Press Cambridge 
1917 



0*^ 



^'^'^Q^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY HERBERT W. GLEASON 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published July iqiy 



3.0 o 
' AUG -3 1917 

©CI.A4730'a 
^(5 / 



" There is no flower so sweet as the foiir-petalled flower which 
science much neglects ; one grey 'petal it has, one green, one red, 
and one whiter 

Emerson. 



PREFACE 

Thoreau writes in his journal, under date of De- 
cember 10, 1856: "It is remarkable how suggestive 
the slightest drawing as a memento of things seen. 
For a few years past I have been accustomed to make 
a rude sketch in my journal of plants, ice, and various 
natural phenomena, and though the fullest accom- 
panying description may fail to recall my experience, 
these rude outline drawings do not fail to carry me 
back to that time and scene. It is as if I saw the same 
thing again, and I may again attempt to describe it 
in words if I choose." 

The present volume is an endeavor to go a step be- 
yond Thoreau's sketches and to reproduce, with the 
aid of photographs, some of the outdoor scenes and 
natural phenomena in which he delighted and which 
he has so graphically described. The series of views 
is limited, of necessity, but a sufficient number are 
given to illustrate Thoreau's method of nature-study 
as well as to emphasize anew the accuracy and felicity 
of his nature-descriptions. It is hoped, also, that this 
combination of verbal and pictorial representation 
will stimulate to a wider apprehension and a more 
vivid realization of the Beautiful in Nature, — thus 
continuing, in a measure, Thoreau's self-appointed 
mission. 



[ viii ] 

Variety has been sought, first of all, in the selection 
of subjects, though obviously many of Thoreau's 
favorite themes could not be included, — being be- 
yond the scope of the camera, — such as the music of 
the telegraph harp, the crowing of chanticleer, the 
fragrance of sweet-fern, the chirping of crickets, the 
flavor of wild apples, the "s-ing" of locusts, etc. In 
the arrangement of subjects the course of the seasons 
has been followed, although it has not been possible 
always to keep an exact succession of dates. 

The quotations are chiefly from the Journal, the 
page numbers referring to the Walden Edition of 
1906. It has not been deemed necessary to indicate 
in every case where an ellipsis occurs. The journal 
being largely a commonplace-book, Thoreau would 
occasionally interject comments quite remote from 
the subject in hand; and therefore, in order to secure 
greater simplicity and conciseness, sometimes a brief 
portion of the original journal entry is here omitted. 
In two or three instances, also, a very slight verbal 
alteration has been made. 

In reading these journal extracts it should be re- 
membered that they were never considered by Thor- 
eau as finished literature. They were frequently writ- 
ten hurriedly, with his own convenience solely in view, 
and left for final polishing and arrangement at some 
later date. Yet this very fact adds a flavor of sin- 
cerity and piquancy to the journal which would per- 
haps have been lost in a studied preparation, with 



more attention given to proportion and correlation. 
Thoreau himself says, "I do not know but thoughts 
written down thus in a journal might be printed in 
the same form with greater advantage than if the 
related ones were brought together into separate 
essays." 

With respect to the photographs, it may be said 
that they were taken by the author with the sole 
purpose of securing, in every case, as close a corre- 
spondence as possible with Thoreau's description. 
Artistic considerations were wholly secondary. 

Boston, April, 1917. 



CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 

Site of Thoreau's House at Walden Pond Frontispiece 

Introduction 

Thoreau's Journals 

At the Leaning Hemlocks 

From Crest of Fair Haven Hill across River to Conantum 

Up River and Down River from Hubbard's Bridge 

Thoreau's Cove, Walden Pond 

Walden Pond in May and in December 

Spaulding's Farm and Cranberry Meadow 

Spring: 

Sand Foliage 2 

Willow Catkins 4 

Skunk-Cabbage ... . . . . . .6 

Winkle-like Fungi 6 

The Old Marlborough Road (poem) .... 8 

Crossbills at the Leaning Hemlocks .... 10 

Cowslips ......... 12 

Houstonias ........ 14 

Mayflowers ......... 16 

Wood Anemones ....... 16 

Rabbits and Partridges (Rabbit in grass) . . .18 

A Partridge Nest 19 

Bird-foot Violets 20 

Fringed Polygala 20 

May Foliage 22 

Barn Swallow ........ 24 

Vesper Sparrow (Bay-wing) ...... 24 



[ xii 3 



Apple Blossoms ....... 26 

Beauty of Wild Apples 26 

Loring's Pond 28 

A Lilac Bush — the Last Remnant of a Home . . 28 

Rhodora 30 

Wild Pink 30 

Ferns in the Woods 32 

Flowering Dogwood ....... 32 

Summer : 

Pincushion Galls ....... 36 

A Nighthawk's Nest 36 

Red-winged Blackbirds and Nest . . . . 38 

Clintonia ......... 40 

Early Morning Fog from Nawshawtuct Hill . . 42 

Buttercups by the Roadside ...... 44 

Lupines ......... 44 

Lady's-slippers ........ 46 

Wild Calla Lily ....:.. 46 

Great Fringed Orchis 48 

White Pond 50 

Mountain Laurel ........ 50 

Trees reflected in the River 52 

Wild Roses 54 

Water-Lilies 56 

Orientation of Young Pine Shoots . . . .58 

A June Landscape from Fair Haven Hill ... 60 

White Clover 60 

Tarbell's Spring 62 

A Waving Rye-field 64 

Yellow and Red Lilies 66 

An Old Unfrequented Road 68 



Blueberries and Huckleberries . . . . 70 

Yew Berry 72 

Rattlesnake-plantain ...... 72 

Rose Mallow 74 

Cinnamon Ferns in Clintonia Swamp ... 76 

Autumn: 

Beautiful Fungi 80 

Lane in front of Tarbell's . . . . . .82 

Sunset on the River 84 

Goldenrod 86 

Fall Asters 88 

Witch-hazel 90 

October Reflections on the Assabet .... 92 

Sun-lighted Tufts of Andropogon 92 

Cobweb Drapery in Barrett's Mill .... 94 

Fringed Gentian 96 

Fallen Leaves ........ 98 

Late Green Ferns . . . . . . . .100 

Polypody 100 

Nature's Decoration of an Old Stump .... 102 

November Woods 104 

Fair Haven Bay through the Woods . . . .106 
Shrub Oak Leaves . . . . • • • 108 

Winter: 

A Winter Scene from Lee's Cliflf 112 

Frost Crystals 114 

Architecture of the Snow 116 

Tracks in the Snow 118 

After the Ice Storm I'^O 

Heavy Snow on Pitch Pines 122 



[ xiv ] 



The Swamp in Winter 124 

A Lodging Snow 126 

The Brook in Winter 128 

The River as a Winter Highway . . . .128 

The Tracks of a Fox 130 

Icicle "Organ-Pipes" 132 

North Branch near Harrington's 132 

Winter (poem) . . . . . . . .134 



INTRODUCTION 

"Above man's aims his nature rose. 
Tlie wisdom of a just content 
Made one small spot a continent, 
And tuned to poetry life's prose." 

Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord^ 
Massachusetts, July 12, 1817, and died there, May 6, 
1862. With the exception of brief periods of absence 
during childhood and youth, a few excursions in adult 
years to the Maine Woods, the White Mountains, 
Cape Cod, Quebec, and other easily reached localities, 
and one longer trip to Minnesota in 1861 in the effort 
to recover his health, his whole life was spent within 
the limits of his native town. This was a distinction 
in which he rejoiced. "I cannot but regard it," he 
says, "as a kindness in those who have the steering 
of nie that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have 
been nailed down to this my native region so long and 
steadily, and made to study and love this spot of 
earth more and more. What would signify in com- 
parison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the 
whole earth instead, got by wandering .f*" And yet 
there are intimations here and there in his journal 
that he would have delighted in extensive travel 
abroad. Few men have ever lived who possessed so 
keen an appreciation of the attractiveness of the out- 






[ xvi ] 

ward world, and few have been so thoroughly alive to 
the advantages of world-wide travel. But this ex- 
perience was denied him, and all he could say was, "I 
have travelled a great deal — in Concord." 

And Thoreau's travels were to some purpose. They 
did not terminate with his own enjoyment. For the 
greater part of his life he kept a careful and extended 
record of his daily excursions and observations, ac- 
companied with a multitude of first-hand — often 
elaborate — moral and philosophical meditations and 
generalizations, all written in a chaste and pictur- 
esque style, and all intended to serve a literary pur- 
pose. Thoreau's vocation was that of a writer, — he 
had as many trades, he declared, as he had fingers, 
but literature was his chosen field, — and all his activ- 
ity, whether bodily or mental, was devoted to this 
one end. Thirty-seven good-sized closely written vol- 
umes^ contain the story of his "travels," while other 
volumes, previously written, were used in the making- 
up of the two books which were published during his 
lifetime, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 



' With regard to these manuscript volumes, Thoreau's complaint will 
be recalled: "I cannot easily buy a blank book to write thoughts in; they 
are all ruled for dollars and cents! " Channing tells us that, in consequence 
of this difBculty, Thoreau was accustomed to purchase blank paper and 
bind up his journals to suit himself. He was extremely economical in the 
use of his material, oftentimes writing on the backs of old letters and 
crowding his journal pages with notes. In one case, however (as shown in 
the photograph reproduced herewith), there was a conspicuous depar- 
ture from this rule, for he devotes an entire page to the single entry: " Feb. 
3d. Five minutes before 3 p.m. Father died." 



[ xvii ] 

and Walden. It was from this storehouse, also, that 
the books entitled Excursions, The Maine Woods, and 
Cape Cod, were prepared, partly by Thoreau himself 
and partly by his literary executors; and when Thor- 
eau 's complete works were published for the first time, 
in 1906, the Journal filled fourteen of the twenty 
volumes.^ "For a long time," he once wrote, "I was 
reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, 
whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk 
of my contributions, and, as is too common with 
writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, 
in this case my pains were their own reward." "Pains " 
for Thoreau, doubtless, but great satisfaction, de- 
light, and inspiration for thousands of readers in after 
years. 

In his studies afield Thoreau sought to cover a wide 
range of subjects, — botany, zoology, geology, ar- 
chaeology, etc., — while in writing up his notes he com- 
bined the ethical, the aesthetic, and the scientific with 
the literary. Naturally, such a voluminous produc- 

1 As indicating the lack of appreciation on the part of his fellow towns- 
men toward Thoreau, the following incident was told the writer by the 
late Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Travelling one day on the 
railway with Judge E. Rockwood Hoar, an eminent citizen of Concord, 
Colonel. Higginson happened to remark that there was some likelihood of 
Henry Thoreau's journals being published. " Henry Thoreau's journals? " 
exclaimed Judge Hoar. "Pray tell me, who on earth would care to read 
Henry Thoreau's journals.''"' The answer to Judge Hoar's query was 
found in the fact that when these journals in their complete form were 
first announced for publication (with some misgivings, it is said, on the 
part of the publishers), the entire edition was subscribed for before half 
the volumes were printed. 



[ xviii ] 

tion, made up of contributions from such a variety of 
sources, often written hastily and without revision, 
is not free from defects; but they are defects which 
are easily passed over by the discriminating reader in 
the face of so much that bears the hall-mark of genius. 
Thoreau's journal may be compared to a choice Turk- 
ish rug, of original, intricate, and yet admittedly 
beautiful pattern. The lines of the pattern do not all 
run geometrically true, and occasionally, here and 
there, a strand appears which is not quite in tune 
with its surroundings. Notwithstanding, the pattern 
is singularly consistent, harmonious, and satisfying, 
every feature contributing faithfully to the unity of 
the design. The colors are fast, even when subjected 
to the most rigorous tests ; there is no needless fringe 
or superficial lustre; while in point of durability, it 
promises to outlast a thousand rugs of the ordinary 
sort. 

Thoreau's interest, in all his outdoor studies, was 
centred chiefly upon life. The rocks and ledges held 
his attention only as they revealed a story of change. 
Thawing sand overflowing the snow was to him a wel- 
come token of Nature's vitality. He delighted in run- 
ning brooks, but stagnant pools were of value only as 
mirrors for the living landscape. November, with its 
bareness and desolateness, was the hardest month of 
the year for him to get through. As for museums, with 
their stuffed specimens, he positively hated them — 
"catacombs of nature." He felt compelled to visit 



them at rare intervals to get confirmation for some 
of his scientific observations, but he queries, "What 
right have mortals to parade these things on their legs 
again, with their wires, and, when heaven has decreed 
that they shall return to dust again, to return them to 
sawdust?" and he affirms, "I have had my right-per- 
ceiving senses so disturbed in these haunts as to mis- 
take a veritable living man for a stuffed specimen, 
and surveyed him with dumb wonder as the strangest 
of the whole collection." Thoreau was a naturalist of 
the best type, but he was no "collector." In Emer- 
son's phrase, he "named all the birds without a gun, 
loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk." Once 
when a farmer came to him and offered to him as a nat- 
uralist a two-headed calf which his cow had brought 
forth, Thoreau was utterly disgusted and began to 
catechize himself, asking what enormity he had com- 
mitted that such an offer should be made to him! 

And not merely life, but human life was the thing 
of greatest concern in his estimation, around which 
everything else must revolve. "Nature must be 
viewed humanly to be viewed at all," he declares; 
"that is, her scenes must be associated with humane 
affections, such as are associated with one's native 
place, for instance. A lover of Nature is preeminently 
a lover of man." "I am not interested in mere phe- 
nomena, though it were the explosion of a planet, only 
as it may have lain in the experience of a human 
being." And once more: "Nature is beautiful only as 



C XX ] 

a place where a life is to be lived. It is not beautiful 
to him who has not resolved on a beautiful life." 
Never was greater mistake made than to charge Thor- 
eau with being a misanthrope. His aloofness from men 
and his contempt for the conventionalities of society 
were due to the fact that his ideals were so much 
higher than those which he found generally prevail- 
ing. One of his most pregnant utterances is quoted 
by Dr. Edward Emerson, himself a boy-friend of 
Thoreau's : "If I dx^not keep step with nthprs it i ,s 
because I hear a different drummer. Let a man step 



to the music which he hears^ however measured and 
however far away." 

Thoreau's glorification of Concord — not histori- 
cal or literary or social or agricultural Concord, but 
outdoor Concord — is the supreme compelling feature 
of his journal writing. No writer in all literature has 
so exalted the place of his birth and recorded so fully 
and so entertainingly its manifold attractions. Gilbert 
White of Selborne is a remote second. And Thoreau 
was absolutely sincere. "I have never got over my 
surprise," he writes, "that I should be born into the 
most estimable place in the world, and in the very 
nick of time too." Winter and summer, day and night, 
through cold and heat, he explored the fields and 
woods and water-courses of Concord, rejoicing in the 
recurrence of the seasons, and invariably returning 
with new treasures of beauty or interest for his jour- 
nal record. "I take all these walks to every point of 



C xxi ] 

the compass, and it is always harvest-time with me. 
I am always gathering my crop from these woods and 
fields and waters, and no man is in my way or inter- 
feres with me." So intimate was his relation with 
these outdoor surroundings and the fleeting phenom- 
ena of the year that he could say, "These regular 
phenomena of the seasons get at last to be simply and 
plainly phenomena or phases of my life. Almost I be- 
lieve the Concord River would not rise and overflow 
its banks again, were I not here." He illustrated ab- 
solutely his own dictum: "To insure health, a man's 
relation to Nature must come very near to a personal 
one; he must be conscious of a friendliness in her; 
when human friends fail or die, she must stand in the 
gap to him. I cannot conceive of any life which de- 
serves the name, unless there is a certain tender rela- 
tion to Nature. This it is which makes winter warm, 
and supplies society in the desert and wilderness.'* 
He was ever "looking into nature with such easy sym- 
pathy as the blue-eyed grass in the meadow looks in 
the face of the sky." 

One cannot escape the impression, in reading Thor- 
eau's Journal, that he considered Concord's resources 
in the realm of nature-study practically boundless. 
He was continually noting correspondences between 
the phenomena of his limited environment and those 
of foreign climes, Emerson records that on returning 
a borrowed volume of Kane's Arctic Explorations, he 
remarked that "most of the phenomena noted might 



[ xxii ] 

be observed in Concord." Sometimes this extolling of 
his native region was too much for the patience of his 
listeners. One lady — the mother of Senator Hoar — 
complained, "Henry talks about Nature just as if she 
had been born and brought up in Concord." (This 
remark, of course, was intended as a mild criticism, 
but Concord people to-day are inclined to view it as 
really involving a threefold compliment: a compli- 
ment to the speaker for her unconscious discernment 
of Thoreau's genius, a compliment to Thoreau for his 
lofty appreciation of Nature, and a compliment to 
Nature herself as indicating her good sense in being 
willing to be born and brought up in Concord!) 

It is not necessary, however, to assume that Na- 
ture wears a special halo in Concord. Doubtless Mr. 
Emerson was correct in saying: "I think his fancy for 
referring everything to the meridian of Concord did 
not grow out of any ignorance or depreciation of other 
longitudes or latitudes, but was rather a playful ex- 
pression of his conviction of the indifferency of all 
places, and that the best place for each is where he 
stands. He expressed it once in this wise: 'I think 
nothing is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould 
under your feet is not sweeter to you to eat than any 
other in this world, or in any world.'" Or, as Thor- 
eau said in another place: "Think of the consummate 
folly of attempting to go away from here! When the 
constant endeavor should be to get nearer and nearer 
here. Take the shortest way round and stay at home. 



[ xxiii ] 

A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its 
calyx, like an acorn in its cup." 

The simple facts are these. Concord is a typical 
New England town. Outside of the village which 
clusters around the post-office, court-house, and 
churches, the inhabitants are chiefly farmers, who 
preserve much of the simplicity of early colonial days 
— or they did in Thoreau's time — while considerable 
areas of land still remain uncultivated. In its land- 
scape features Concord presents a pleasing combina- 
tion of field and meadow, hill and dale, lake and river, 
swamp and woodland. In the spring and summer 
there is everywhere a luxuriance of floral and animal 
life, varied and lovely; in autumn there are the bril- 
liant tints of departing foliage and an abundance of 
fruits; in winter there is the soft purity of the snow 
and the delicate beauty of frost crystals. The visitor 
to Concord at any season of the year does not need 
to discount Thoreau's enthusiasm to appreciate the 
true charm of his surroundings. To be sure, the hills 
of Concord are tame as compared with those found 
in many towns of northern and western New England, 
yet the views from their summits are peculiarly pic- 
turesque and appealing. Not long ago the writer 
piloted to the crest of Fair Haven Hill — one of 
Thoreau's dearest shrines — an English friend with 
whom he had recently been mountain-climbing in the 
Canadian Rockies. This friend, a world-wide traveller 
and an alpinist of international fame, notwithstanding 



[ xxiv ] 

that he was fresh from scenes of superlative grandeur 
in the Canadian Alps, was enthusiastic over the view 
from this little hill, declaring it one of the most beau- 
tiful he had ever seen. After all, Thoreau's comment 
applies to any view, from whatever summit: "There 
is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape 
as we are prepared to appreciate, — not a grain 
more"; and if he could see more from Annursnack 
Hill than most people can see from the top of Pike's 
Peak, — why, the simple truth is that he was better 
prepared to appreciate what he saw. 

The years which have passed since Thoreau wrote 
the last page in his journal have witnessed many 
changes in Concord — some of which he would have 
welcomed but most of which he would have deplored. 
White Pond and the Leaning Hemlocks were long 
ago "prophaned" by the railway. Baker Farm, Lee's 
Hill, Conantum, Fair Haven Hill, Nashawtuc, Punk- 
atasset. Bear Hill, and Three Friends' Hill are crowned 
by sumptuous private residences. Large areas over 
which Thoreau used to roam, exulting in their wild- 
ness and freedom, are now placarded everywhere with 
the forbidding sign "No Trespassing." Clamshell 
Bank, that priceless (to him) relic of Indian days, 
comes within the domain of a large hospital. The 
J. P. Brown Farm now belongs to the Concord Coun- 
try Club, and its extensive grass lands in which Thor- 
eau took peculiar delight have been converted into 
an elaborate golf course, Nut Meadow Brook, which 




FROM CREST OF FAIR HAVEN HILL ACROSS RIVER 10 CONANTUM 



[ XXV ] 

flows through the centre, forming a notable hazard. 
FHnt's Pond has been made a source of water-supply 
for Lincoln and Concord, and Bateman's Pond is 
staked out with a rowing course for a boys' private 
school near by. Thoreau and his co-saunterer Chan- 
ning were desperately aggrieved one day to find that 
"a new staring house" had been erected just beyond 
Hubbard's Bridge, "thereby doing irreparable in- 
jury to a large section of country for walkers." "It 
obliges us," he complained, "to take still more steps 
after weary ones to reach the secluded fields and 
woods," and they talked of petitioning the owner to 
remove the house and thus abate a nuisance. What 
would the two friends say to-day on finding the same 
house, not only greatly enlarged and made still more 
conspicuous, but surrounded by a whole cluster of 
similar ornate dwellings .'^ And then looking in the op- 
posite direction, imagine their indignation on behold- 
ing the sacred slopes of Fair Haven Hill taken up with 
"gentlemen's estates," with their lawns, gardens, and 
tennis courts ! 

But there has been one compensation for this pri- 
vate appropriation of choice portions of the land- 
scape. "No Shooting" is a more frequent sign than 
"No Trespassing," and these extensive estates thus 
guarded are proving places of refuge for many forms 
of wild life which in Thoreau's day were the free booty 
of unrestrained hunters. Partridges and gray squir- 
rels are multiplying, pheasants (lately introduced) 



C xxvi ] 

are thriving, rabbits rear their young undisturbed, 
and even deer have been repeatedly seen in Concord 
within recent years, — the last-named a circumstance 
which Thoreau would have rejoiced to record in let- 
ters of gold. 

There are, however, many sections of Concord 
which remain in practically the same state of wild- 
ness which made them so attractive to Thoreau, and 
one can easily find the same birds and flowers and 
witness the same phenomena of the advancing sea- 
sons. Best of all, Walden Pond — the one locality in 
Concord which is most closely associated with Thor- 
eau in the public mind — is little changed from what 
it was when Thoreau built his famous hut by its shore 
and there lived the unique hermit life of which he has 
given so full an account in Walden. For a number of 
years the Fitchburg Railroad took advantage of its 
proximity to the pond to exploit it as a picnic resort, 
and every summer thousands of people were brought 
to its shores to enjoy "a day off": boating on the 
pond, swinging in the pines, patronizing the lemon- 
ade-stands and bowling-alleys, and then going away 
and leaving the usual assortment of lunch-boxes, 
waste paper, peanut-shells, etc., — the whole a pro- 
ceeding which would surely have brought sorrow to 
Thoreau's heart. But there came a blissful day when 
the picnic buildings burned up, and they were never 
replaced, so that once more the pond assumed its 
serene attitude and has retained it ever since. Much 





UP RIVER AND DOWN RIVER FROM HUBBARD'S BRIDGE 



[^ xxvii 2 

of the preservation of the beauty of Walden is due to 
the "Emerson children" (Dr. Edward Waldo Emer- 
son and Mrs. Edith Emerson Forbes), who own a 
great portion of the land bordering the pond and are 
determined that no changes shall take place so long 
as it is in their control. 

Close by the site of Thoreau's hut, at the head of 
the "Deep Cove," there has been erected a huge 
cairn of stones, each visitor to the spot contributing 
a stone to the pile. This commemorative idea origi- 
nated with Bronson Alcott, the Concord philosopher, 
whose axe Thoreau borrowed when he began the 
construction of his hut, and whom he afterwards 
described as "the man of most faith of any alive." 
Alcott's tribute to Thoreau has often been quoted : — 

" Much do they wrong our Henry wise and kind. 
Morose who name thee, cynical to men. 
Forsaking manners civil and refined 
To build thyself in Walden woods a den, — 
Then flout society, flatter the rude hind. 
We better knew thee, loyal citizen ! 
Thou, friendship's all-adventuring pioneer. 
Civility itself would civilize." 

There is an indescribable charm about the scenery 
of New England which is most keenly felt by those 
whose early life has been passed under its spell. It 
was the lot of the writer to be exiled (speaking sub- 
jectively) from New England for a period of some 
sixteen years, this period being spent in the State of 
Minnesota. There was much of interest found in 



[^ xxviii 1 

the new surroundings; but the fertility of the prai- 
ries, the wide reach of the primitive forests, the 
novelty and affluence of the wild flowers and birds, 
did not prevent an occasional craving for the sight 
of a bit of New England barrenness, — such as a 
rocky pasture, bounded by stone walls and dotted 
with creeping junipers, or a few of New England's 
commonest flowers, — buttercups, or houstonias, or 
ox-eye daisies. It was at this time that the writer 
first became acquainted with the portions of Thor- 
eau's journal published in the eighties by his friend, 
Mr. H. G. O. Blake; and the reading of these, with 
their vivid delineation of characteristic New Eng- 
land scenes, sacredly cherished in memory, aroused 
a passionate longing to visit the region so intimately 
described by Thoreau and enjoy a ramble among 
his beloved haunts. Consequently, at the close of 
the "exile" above noted, an early opportunity was 
seized to visit Concord, with camera in hand, and 
many photographic mementos were taken of locali- 
ties associated with Thoreau. But this was only the 
beginning. During the fifteen years succeeding, the 
writer has made frequent pilgrimages to Concord, 
under all conditions of season and weather, searching 
out places and objects described by Thoreau, tread- 
ing in his footsteps so far as they were discoverable, 
and bringing back photographs of all that was most 
interesting.^ Out of many hundred views thus taken 

^ Lest any should assume that the fondness for New England scenery 




THOREAU'S COTE, WALDEN POND 



C XXIX ] 

a brief series is chosen for reproduction in this 
voKime. 

Some of the experiences in connection with these 
Concord excursions are perhaps worth noting. 

First of all, they were self -rewarding, entirely 
apart from their historical or personal interest. A 
breezy walk over Concord meadows or uplands far 
exceeds in exhilaration and inspiration any after- 
noon upon a golf course or any conceivable trip in 
a motor-car. 

Confirmation was found again and again of Thor- 
eau's descriptive accuracy. Certain flowers, for exam- 
ple, were traced unerringly merely from his journal 
notes. 

Confirmation, likewise, of the thoroughness of his 
observations in the field was frequently noted. Re- 
peatedly upon these rambles some scene or object 
was photographed simply because it seemed to pos- 
sess exceptional interest, without reference to any 
relation which it might have to Thoreau, and then 
afterwards it was found that the identical scene or 
object was carefully described in his journal. Very 
few facts in the realm of natural history escaped his 
recording pen. 

here avowed is due to a lack of acquaintance with other regions more 
famous for their grandeur, it may be stated that during this same period 
the writer made two trips to Alaska, six to CaHfornia and the Pacific 
Coast, three to the Grand Canon of Arizona, seven to the Canadian 
Rockies, two to Yellowstone Park, and three to the Rocky Mountains of 
Colorado. Yet, after every one of these trips, it was a genuine delight to 
return to the simple beauty of New England. 



[ XXX ] 

Still another confirmation, of a different sort, was 
found in the duplication of Thoreau's experience 
with regard to the solitariness of his walks. More 
than once he comments upon this. "There are said 
to be two thousand inhabitants in Concord, and yet 
I find such ample space and verge, even miles of 
walking every day in which I do not meet nor see a 
human being, and often not very recent traces of 
them. Methinks that for a great part of the time, 
as much as it is possible, I walk as one possessing the 
advantages of human culture, fresh from the society 
of men, but turned loose in the woods, the only man 
in nature, walking and meditating to a great extent 
as if man and his customs and institutions were not." 
It seems strange, but it is a fact, that during all these 
fifteen years of frequent rambling among the fields 
and woods of Concord the writer has never yet met 
with a single other person bent upon a similar errand. 
This, of course, merely happened so; we did not 
chance to meet, that is all. The "Walking Associa- 
tion" of Concord has not yet disbanded, and it is 
not fair to conclude that Thoreau's gospel of the 
outdoor life which he so vigorously preached has 
been wholly lost upon the residents of his native 
town. 

There was a peculiar fascination in hunting down 
localities to which Thoreau had given names after 
an arbitrary method of his own, and without any 
regard whatever for their possible recognition by 





WALDEN POND IN MAY AND IN DECEMBER 



I xxxi ] 

other people. Ripple Lake, Cardinal Shore, Bittern 
Cliff, Owl-Nest Swamp, Arethusa Meadow, Curly- 
Pate Hill, Purple Utricularia Bay, Bidens Brook, 
Hubbard's Close, — these and many similar names 
are capitalized and otherwise dignified in his journal 
records just as if he were speaking of London or Paris 
or New York. But where were these places .^^ It was 
useless to appeal to residents of Concord. They 
might as well have been situated in Siberia or Pata- 
gonia. Even persons still living who had known 
Thoreau personally and had occasionally been with 
him on some of his walks were hopelessly in the dark 
as to most of them. Ellery Channing, author of a 
life of Thoreau, and his most frequent walking com- 
panion, who lingered forty years after the death of 
his friend and associate, was appealed to in connec- 
tion with two or three localities, but his memory was 
afterwards proved to be sadly at fault. 

It was only by a careful comparison of all the jour- 
nal references to each locality, the examination of a 
large number of Thoreau's manuscript surveys pre- 
served in the Concord Library, and especially by 
following out on the ground Thoreau's tramps afield, 
that finally the greater number of these localities 
were identified. 

One amusing incident occurred in connection with 
the effort to locate "Spaulding's Farm." Readers 
of the volume entitled Excursions will perhaps recall 
that Thoreau makes this farm the subject of one of 



[^ xxxii ] 

his most notable parables: "I took a walk on Spauld- 
ing's Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting 
sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine 
wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the 
wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if 
some ancient and altogether admirable and shining 
family had settled there in that part of the land called 
Concord, .unknown to me. I saw their park, their 
pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in 
Spaulding's cranberry meadow," etc. But the most 
diligent inquiry failed to locate this place. Finally, 
a good lady of Concord came to the rescue. She said, 
"I know an old man who used to drive a butcher's 
cart through this part of the country, and he will 
know if anybody does." So, meeting him shortly 
after, she said, "Mr. D., can you tell me where 
Spaulding's Farm used to be in Concord.^ " "Spauld- 
ing's Farm?" — the old man thought a moment. 
"There never was any such place in Concord, 
ma'am." "But Henry Thoreau says there was, in his 
journal." "Henry Thoreau.'^" — with an expression 
of undisguised contempt — "I knew Henry Thoreau 
ever since he was a boy, and I never had much of an 
opinion of him. And I haint seen nothing since to 
change my mind!''' 

But Spaulding's Farm was eventually discovered, 
— not in Concord, but in Carlisle, the village just 
to the north which used to be a part of Concord, — 
and a visit to the farm proved most interesting. The 





SPADLDING'S FARM AND CRANBERRY MEADOW 



[^ xxxiii '2 

old homestead, aged two hundred years, still stands; 
the "cranberry meadow" was readily found, but the 
"stately pine wood" long since fell before the axe. 
It must have been a magnificent grove, judging from 
the size of the stumps which still remain. Needless 
to say, no vestiges of the "altogether admirable and 
shining family" were discovered, but Thoreau would 
doubtless find, if he were living to-day, that they 
had simply removed their domicile to some other 
part of Concord. 

It is curious to note how little Thoreau was es- 
teemed by most of his fellow villagers. He was com- 
monly regarded as a sort of ne'er-do-well, squander- 
ing his time in roaming over the fields and up and 
down the river, rarely shooting or fishing, and with 
no sensible object in view. To be sure, he some- 
times did a job at surveying or whitewashing or 
fence-building, and he helped his father occasionally 
at pencil-making; but that he actually had a "pro- 
fession" — such an idea could not be tolerated for a 
moment. Yet Thoreau had a profession, and this is 
his own statement of it : — 

" My profession is to be always on the alert to find God 
in Nature, to know his lurking places, to watch for and de- 
scribe all the divine features which I can detect in Nature." 

This profession he followed faithfully and un- 
swervingly. Nothing more deeply impresses itself 
upon the mind of one who reads Thoreau's Journal 
sympathetically, especially if that reading be in the 



[^ xxxiv ] 

atmosphere of the scenes which he describes, than 
the conviction that Thoreau possessed a profoundly 
religious nature. He would not have chosen the 
adjective, but it is abundantly evident that his walks 
afield were to him religious excursions, — seasons of 
communion with the Unseen. To quote a modern 
phrase, he was ever seeking to be "in tune with the 
Infinite." That was a significant remark which he 
made upon his dying bed to his aunt, who, with 
kindly intent, urged him to "make his peace with 
God." He simply said, "I have never quarreled with 
Him." Notwithstanding his misjudged criticism of the 
churches and his intolerance of creeds, he possessed 
a creed of his own, and it is well worth quoting: — 

"I know that I am. I know that Another is who 
knows more than I, who takes interest in me, whose 
creature, and yet whose kindred, in one sense, am I. 
I know that the enterprise is worthy. I know that 
things work well. I have heard no bad news." 

If we were to search for the crowning moral of 
Thoreau's life and writings, perhaps we could find it 
nowhere more truly or more beautifully expressed 
than in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, his 
neighbor and friend : — 

"The rounded world is fair to see. 
Nine times folded in mystery: 
Though bafHed seers cannot impart 
The secret of its laboring heart. 
Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast. 
And all is clear from east to west." 



I. SPRING 



[ 2 3 

SAND FOLIAGE 

Few phenomena gave me more delight than to 
observe the forms which thawing sand and clay as- 
sume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut ^ on the 
railroad through which I passed on my way to the 
village, a phenomenon not very common on so large 
a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks 
of the right material must have been greatly multi- 
plied since railroads were invented. The material 
was sand of every degree of fineness and of various 
rich colors, commonly mixed with a little clay. When 
the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a 
thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow 
down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out 
through the snow and overflowing it where no sand 
was to be seen before. Innumerable little streams 
overlap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a 
sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the 
law of currents, and half way that of vegetation. . . . 
It is truly a grotesque vegetation, whose forms and 
color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architec- 
tural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus, 
chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves. 

Walden, 336, 337. 

^ The "Deep Cut" was despoiled of its magnitude some years ago, a 
large section of its easterly bank being removed for grading purposes 
elsewhere. Sufficient of the original sand-and-clay formation still remains, 
however, to furnish annually the same unique phenomenon in which 
Thoreau delighted. H. W. G. 



: 3 : 

March 2, 1854. The sand foliage is vital in its 
form, reminding me of what are called the vitals of 
the animal body. I am not sure that its arteries are 
ever hollow. They are rather meandering channels 
with remarkably distinct sharp edges, formed instan- 
taneously as by magic. How rapidly and perfectly 
it organizes itself! . . . On the outside all the life of 
the earth is expressed in the animal or vegetable, but 
make a deep cut in it and you find it vital; you find 
in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable 
leaf. No wonder, then, that plants grow and spring 
in it. The atoms have already learned the law. Let 
a vegetable sap convey it upwards and you have a 
vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses 
itself outwardly in leaves, which labors with the idea 
thus inwardly. The overhanging leaf sees here its 
prototype. 

Journal, vi, 148. 



C4] 

WILLOW CATKINS 

March 2, 1859. The willow catkins by the rail- 
road have now all crept out about an eighth of an 
inch, giving to the bushes already a very pretty ap- 
pearance when you stand on the sunny side, the sil- 
very-white specks contrasting with the black scales. 
Seen along the twigs, they are somewhat like small 
pearl buttons on a waistcoat. Go and measure to 
what length the silvery willow catkins have crept out 
beyond their scales, if you would know what time o' 
the year it is by Nature's clock. 

Journal, xii, 4. 

March 20, 1858. At Hubbard's wall, how hand- 
some the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright 
silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools 
in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which 
their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from 
the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from 
beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have 
thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness 
at base on a close inspection. These fixed swarms of 
arctic buds spot the air very prettily along the hedges. 
They remind me somewhat by their brilliancy of the 
snow-flecks which are so bright by contrast at this 
season when the sun is high. Is not this, perhaps, the 
earliest, most obvious, awakening of vegetable life.'* 

Journal, x, 310. 



C5 1 

April 11, 1856. You take your way along the edge 
of some swamp that has been cleared at the base of 
some south hillside, where there is sufficient light and 
air and warmth, but the cold northerly winds are 
fended off, and there behold the silvery catkins of the 
sallows, which have already crept along their lusty 
osiers, more than an inch in length, till they look like 
silvery wands, though some are more rounded, like 
bullets. The lower part of some catkins which have 
lost their bud-scales emit a tempered crimson blush 
through their down, from the small scales within. 
The catkins grow longer and larger as you advance 
into the warmest localities, till at last you discover 
one catkin in which the reddish anthers are beginning 
to push from one side near the end, and you know that 
a little yellow flame will have burst out there by to- 
morrow, if the day is fair. 

Journal, viii, 276. 



C 6] 

SKUNK-CABBAGE 

March 18, 1860. I examine the skunk-cabbage, 
now generally and abundantly in bloom all along 
under Clamshell. It is a flower, as it were, without 
a leaf. All that you see is a stout beaked hood just 
rising above the dead brown grass in the springy 
ground now, where it has felt the heat, under some 
south bank. The single enveloping leaf, or "spathe," 
is all the flower that you see commonly, and those are 
as variously colored as tulips and of similar color, — 
from a very dark almost black mahogany to a light 
yellow streaked or freckled with mahogany. It is a 
leaf simply folded around the flower, with its top 
like a bird's beak bent over it for its further protec- 
tion, evidently to keep off wind and frost, with a 
sharp angle down its back. These various colors are 
seen close together, and their beaks are bent in vari- 
ous directions. 

Journal, xiii, 199. 

WINKLE-LIKE FUNGI 

April 13, 1854. Saw an old log, stripped of bark, 
either poplar or maple, four feet long, — its whole 
upper half covered with that handsome winkle-like 
fungus. They are steel-colored and of a velvety 
appearance, somewhat semicircular, with concentric 
growths of different shades, passing from quite black 





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within through a slaty-blue to (at present) a buff 
edge. Beneath cream-color. There are many minute 
ones a tenth of an inch in diameter, the shell-like leaf 
or ear springing from one side. The full-grown are 
sometimes united into one leaf for eight or nine 
inches in one level along the log, tier above tier, with 
a scalloped edge. They are handsomest when two or 
more are opposed, meeting at their bases, and make 
a concentric circle. They remind you of shells, also 
of butterflies. The great variety and regularity of 
the shading are very interesting. They spring from 
a slight base, rising by a narrow neck. They grow 
on stumps and other dead wood on land, even drift- 
wood left high, just as some marine shells, their rela- 
tives, grow on driftwood. 

Journal, vi, 196. 



C 8 ] 

THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD 

When the spring stirs my blood 
With the instinct to travel, 
I can get enough gravel 
On the Old Marlborough Road. 
Nobody repairs it, 
For nobody wears it; 
It is a living way. 
As the Christians say. 
Not many there be 

Who enter therein. 
Only the guests of the 

Irishman Quin. 
What is it, what is it, 

But a direction out there, 
And the bare possibility 
Of going somewhere.'' 

Great guideboards of stone, 
But travellers none; 
Cenotaphs of the towns 
Named on their crowns. 
It is worth going to see 
Where you might be. 
What king 
Did the thing, 
I am still wondering; 
Set up how or when. 
By what selectmen. 



C 9 J 

Gourgas or Lee, 

Clark or Darby? 

They 're a great endeavor 

To be something forever; 

Blank tablets of stone, 

Where a traveller might groan, 

And in one sentence 

Grave all that is known; 

Which another might read, 

In his extreme need. 

I know one or two 

Lines that would do. 

Literature that might stand 

All over the land, 

Which a man could remember 

Till next December, 

And read again in the spring, 

After the thawing. 

If with fancy unfurled 

You leave your abode. 
You may go round the world 

By the Old Marlborough Road. 

Excursions y 215. 



r lo :] 

CROSSBILLS AT THE LEANING HEMLOCKS 

April 13, 1860. As I was paddling [up the Assa- 
bet] past the uppermost hemlocks I saw two peculiar 
and plump birds near me on the bank there which 
reminded me of the cow blackbird and of the oriole 
at first. I saw at once that they were new to me, and 
guessed that they were crossbills,^ which was the case, 
— male and female. The former was dusky-greenish 
(through a glass), orange, and red, the orange, etc., 
on head, breast, and rump, the vent white; dark, 
large bill; the female more of a dusky slate-color, 
and yellow instead of orange and red. They were 
very busily eating the seeds of the hemlock, whose 
cones were strewn on the ground, and they were 
very fearless, allowing me to approach quite near. . . . 
They were very parrot-like both in color (especially 
the male, greenish and orange, etc.) and in their man- 
ner of feeding, — holding the hemlock cones in one 
claw and rapidly extracting the seeds with their bills, 
thus trying one cone after another very fast. But 
they kept their bills a-going so that, near as they 
were, I did not distinguish the cross. I should have 
looked at them in profile. At last the two hopped 
within six feet of me, and one within four feet, and 

^ The crossbills photographed were found near the "Leaning Hem- 
locks," — the identical locality noted by Thoreau, — only they were of 
the white-winged species, while the birds Thoreau saw were evidently 
red crossbills. The occurrence of either species in Concord is still a rare 
event. H. W. G. 



C 11 ] 

they were coming still nearer, as if partly from curi- 
osity, though nibbling the cones all the while, when 
my chain fell down and rattled loudly, — for the 
wind shook the boat, — and they flew off a rod. In 
Bechstein I read that "it frequents fir and pine 
woods, but only when there are abundance of the 
cones." It may be that the abundance of white pine 
cones last fall had to do with their coming here. The 
hemlock cones were very abundant too, methinks. 

Journal, xiii, 245, 246. 



C 12 ] 



COWSLIPS 

April 6, 1853. To Second Division Brook. One 
cowslip, though it shows the yellow, is not fairly out, 
but will be by to-morrow. How they improve their 
time! Not a moment of sunshine lost. One thing I 
may depend on: there has been no idling with the 
flowers. They advance as steadily as a clock. Nature 
loses not a moment, takes no vacation. These plants, 
now protected by the water, just peeping forth. I 
should not be surprised to find that they drew in 
their heads in a frosty night. 

Journal, v, 98. 

April 11, 1856. I might have said on the 8th: Be- 
hold that little hemisphere of green in the black and 
sluggish brook, amid the open alders, sheltered under 
a russet tussock. It is the cowslips' forward green. 
Look narrowly, explore the warmest nooks; here are 
buds larger yet, showing more yellow, and yonder 
see two full-blown yellow disks, close to the water's 
edge. Methinks they dip into it when the frosty 
nights come. 

Journal, viii, 276. 



i: 13 1 

April 29, 1852. The season is most forward at the 
Second Division Brook, where the cowslip is in blos- 
som, — and nothing yet planted at home, — these 
bright-yellow suns of the meadow, in rich clusters, 
their flowers contrasting with the green leaves, from 
amidst the all-producing, dark-bottomed water. A 
flower-fire bursting up, as if through crevices in the 
meadow. They are very rich, seen in the meadow 
where they grow, and the most conspicuous flower 
at present, but held in the hand they are rather 
coarse. But their yellow and green are really rich, 
and in the meadow they are the most delicate objects. 
Their bright yellow is something incredible when 
first beheld. 

Journal, iii, 479, 480. 



HOUSTONIAS 

April 24, 1853. Houstonias. How affecting that, 
annually at this season, as surely as the sun takes a 
higher course in the heavens, this pure and simple 
little flower peeps out and spots the great globe with 
white in our America, its four little white or bluish 
petals on a slender stalk making a delicate flower 
about a third of an inch in diameter! What a sig- 
nificant, though faint, utterance of spring through 
the veins of earth ! 

Journal, v, 112. 

May 5, 1860. There are some dense beds of hous- 
tonia in the yard of the old Conantum house. Some 
parts of them show of a distinctly bluer shade two 
rods off. They are most interesting now, before many 
other flowers are out, the grass high, and they have 
lost their freshness. I sit down by one dense bed of 
them to examine it. It is about three feet long and 
two or more wide. The flowers not only crowd one 
another, but are in several tiers, one above another, 
and completely hide the ground, — a mass of white. 
Counting those in a small place, I find that there are 
about three thousand flowers in a square foot. They 
are all turned a little toward the sun, and emit a re- 
freshing odor. Here is a lumbering bumblebee, prob- 
ing these tiny flowers. It is a rather ludicrous sight. 
Of course they will not support him, except a little 



[ 15 ] 

where they are densest; so he bends them down 
awkwardly (hauling them in with his arms, as it 
were), one after another, thrusting his beak into the 
tube of each. It takes him but a moment to dispatch 
one. It is a singular sight, a bumblebee clambering 
over a bed of these delicate flowers. 

Journal, xiii, 278. 



. [ 16 3 

MAYFLOWERS {EPIGMA REPENS) 

April 4, 1859. The epigsea looks as if it would 
open in two or three days at least, — showing much 
color. The flower-buds are protected by the with- 
ered leaves, oak leaves, which partly cover them, 
so that you must look pretty sharp to detect the 
first flower. These plants blossom by main strength, 
as it were, or the virtue that is in them, — not grow- 
ing by water, as most early flowers, — in dry copses. 

Journal, xii, 114. 

April 29, 1852. The may flower on the point of 
blossoming. I think I may say that it will blossom 
to-morrow. The blossoms of this plant are remark- 
ably concealed beneath the leaves, perhaps for pro- 
tection. It is singularly unpretending, not seeking 
to exhibit or display its simple beauty. It is the most 
delicate flower, both to eye and to scent, as yet. Its 
weather-worn leaves do not adorn it. If it had fresh 
spring leaves it would be more famous and sought 

after. 

Journal, iii, 480. 

WOOD ANEMONES 

April 28, 1856. Many Anemone nemorosa in full 
bloom at the further end of Yellow Thistle Meadow, 
in that warm nook by the brook, some probably a 
day or two there. I think that they are thus early 



[ 17 ] 

on account of Miles's dam having broken away and 
washed off all the snow for some distance there, in 
the latter part of the winter, long before it melted 
elsewhere. It is a warm corner under the south side 
of a wooded hill, where they are not often, if ever 
before, flooded. 

Journal, viii, 315. 

May 2, 1855. The anemone is well named, for see 
now the nemorosa, amid the fallen brush and leaves, 
trembling in the wind, so fragile. 

Journal, vii, 352. 

May 9, 1852. To Trillium Woods. These low 
woods are full of the Anemone nemorosa, half opened 
at this hour and gracefully drooping, — sepals with 
a purple tinge on the under side, now exposed. They 
are in beds and look like hail on the ground; their 
now globular flowers spot the gi-ound white. 

Journal, iv, 40. 



C i« ] 



RABBITS AND PARTRIDGES 

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? 
They are among the most simple and indigenous 
animal products; ancient and venerable families 
known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very 
hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves 
and to the ground, — and to one another; it is either 
winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen 
a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts 
away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as 
rustling leaves. The partridge and the rabbit are 
still sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil, what- 
ever revolutions occur. If the forest is cut off, the 
sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them 
concealment, and they become more numerous than 
ever. That must be a poor country indeed that does 
not support a hare. Our woods teem with them both, 
and around every swamp may be seen the partridge 
or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse- 
hair snares, which some cow-boy tends. 

Walden, 310. 



C 19 ] 



A PARTRIDGE NEST 

May 7, 1855. A partridge flew up from within 
three or four feet of me with a loud whir, and be- 
trayed one cream-colored egg in a little hollow amid 
the leaves. 

May 12. I find the partridge-nest of the 7th par- 
tially covered with dry oak leaves, and two more 
eggs only, three in all, cold. Probably the bird is 
killed. 

May 26. The partridge which on the 12th had 
left three cold eggs covered up with oak leaves is 
now sitting on eight. She apparently deserted her 
nest for a time and covered it. ^ 

Journal, vii, 363, 371, 390. 

1 These entries illustrate a habit of Thoreau's — examples of which 
abound in the journal — of following up an interesting subject so as to 
make a complete record. Bradford Torrey remarks that Thoreau's pro- 
nunciation of the family name, which was very much like the adjective 
"thorough," suggests a conspicuous trait in his character. H. W. G. 



[ 20 ] 

BIRD-FOOT VIOLETS {VIOLA PEDATA) 

May 10, 1858. How much expression there is in 

the Viola peclata ! I do not know on the whole but it 

is the handsomest of them all, it is so large and grows 

in such large masses. I have thought there was a 

certain shallowness in its expression, yet it spreads 

so perfectly open with its face turned upward that 

you get its whole expression. 

Journal, x, 411. 

May 17, 1853. The V. pedata presents the greatest 

array of blue of any flower as yet. The flowers are 

so raised above their leaves, and so close together, 

that they make a more indelible impression of blue 

on the eye; it is almost dazzling. I blink as I look at 

them, they seem to reflect the blue rays so forcibly, 

with a slight tinge of lilac. 

Journal, v, 165. 

FRINGED POLYGALA 

May 17, 1853. The fringed polygala surprises us 
in meadows or in low woods as a rarer, richer, and 
more delicate color, with a singularly tender or deli- 
cate-looking leaf. As you approach midsummer, the 
color of flowers is more intense and fiery. The red- 
dest flower is the flower especially. Our blood is not 
white, nor is it yellow, nor even blue. 

Journal, v, 164. 




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C 21 ] 

May 27, 1852, The fringed polygala near the Cor- 
ner Spring is a deHcate flower, with very fresh tender 
green leaves and red -purple blossoms; beautiful from 
the contrast of its clear red-purple flowers with its 
clear green leaves. 

Journal, iv, 74. 



MAY FOLIAGE 

May 17, 1852. Now the sun has come out after 
the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and 
tender promise and fragrance is the new world ! The 
woods putting forth new leaves; it is a memorable 
season. So hopeful! These young leaves have the 
beauty of flowers. . . . Do I smell the young birch 
leaves at a distance .^^ Most trees are beautiful when 
leafing out, but especially the birch. After a storm 
at this season, the sun comes out and lights up the 
tender expanding leaves, and all nature is full of light 
and fragrance, and the birds sing without ceasing, 
and the earth is a fairyland. The birch leaves are so 
small that you see the landscape through the tree, 
and they are like silvery and green spangles in the 
sun, fluttering about the tree. 

Journal, iv, 61, 62. 



[ 23 ;] 

May 22, 1854. Now the springing foliage is like a 
sunlight on the woods. I was first attracted and sur- 
prised when I looked round and off to Conantum, 
at the smooth, lawn-like green fields and pasturing 
cows, bucolical, reminding me of new butter. The 
air so clear — as not in summer — makes all things 
shine, as if all surfaces had been washed by the 
rains of spring and were not yet soiled or begrimed 
or dulled. You see even to the mountains clearly. 
The grass so short and fresh, the tender yellowish- 
green and silvery foliage of the deciduous trees 
lighting up the landscape, the birds now most musi- 
cal, the sorrel beginning to redden the fields with 
ruddy health, — all these things make earth now a 
paradise. How many times I have been surprised 
thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the 
fairness of the earth! 

Journal, vi, 289, 



C 24 ] 

BARN SWALLOW 

May 20, 1852. A barn swallow accompanied me 
across the Depot Field, methinks attracted by the 
insects which I started, though I saw them not, 
wheeling and tacking incessantly on all sides and 
repeatedly dashing within a rod of me. It is an agree- 
able sight to watch one. Nothing lives in the air but 
is in rapid motion. 

Journal, iv, 66. 

VESPER SPARROW (BAY-WING) 

May 12, 1857. While dropping beans in the gar- 
den at Texas just after sundown, I hear from across 
the fields the note of the bay-wing, and it instantly 
translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs 
all the world that we jointly inhabit. It reminds me 
of so many country afternoons and evenings when 
this bird's strain was heard far over the fields. The 
spirit of its earth-song, of its serene and true phi- 
losophy, was breathed into me, and I saw the world 
as through a glass, as it lies eternally. Some of its 
aboriginal contentment, even of its domestic feli- 
city, possessed me. What he suggests is permanently 
true. As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years 
ago, so sang he to-night. In the beginning God heard 
his song and pronounced it good, and hence it has 
endured. ... I ordinarily plod along a sort of white- 



C 25 ] 

washed prison entry, subject to some indifferent or 
even grovelling mood. I do not distinctly realize 
my destiny. I have turned down my light to the 
merest glimmer and am doing some task which I 
have set myself. I take incredibly narrow views, live 
on the limits, and have no recollection of absolute 
truth. Mushroom institutions hedge me in. But 
suddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of 
eternal wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the 
sparrow, and liberates me, whets and clarifies my 
senses, makes me a competent witness. 

Journal, ix, 363-65. 



i; 26- ] 

APPLE BLOSSOMS 

May 21, 1852. The earlier apple trees are in bloom, 
and resound with the hum of bees of all sizes and 
other insects. To sit under the first apple tree in 
blossom is to take another step into summer. The 
apple blossoms are so abundant and full, white 
tinged with red; a rich-scented Pomona fragrance, 
telling of heaps of apples in the autumn, perfectly 
innocent, wholesome, and delicious. 

Journal, iv, 67. 

The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most 
beautiful of any tree's, so copious and so delicious 
to both sight and scent. The walker is frequently 
tempted to turn and linger near some more than 
usually handsome one, whose blossoms are two- 
thirds expanded. How superior it is in these respects 
to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored nor 
fragrant! 

Excursions, 294. 

BEAUTY OF WILD APPLES ^ 

Apples, these I mean, unspeakably fair, — apples 
not of Discord, but of Concord! Yet not so rare but 

1 Thoreau's enthusiastic essay on "Wild Apples" is still admirably 
up-to-date, so far as Concord is concerned. Both when in flower and in 
fruit, the wild apple trees of Concord form a strong attraction for the 
walker. H. W. G. 







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C 27 1 

that the homehest may have a share. Painted by 
the frosts, some a uniform clear bright yellow, or 
red, or crimson, as if their spheres had regularly 
revolved, and enjoyed the sun on all sides alike, — 
some with the faintest pink blush imaginable, — 
some brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or 
with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running regu- 
larly from the stem-dimple to the blossom end, like 
meridional lines, on a straw-colored ground, — some 
touched with a greenish rust, like a fine lichen, here 
and there, with crimson blotches or eyes more or less 
confluent and fiery when wet, — and others gnarly, 
and freckled or peppered all over on the stem side 
with fine crimson spots on a white ground, as if acci- 
dentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who paints 
the autumn leaves. Others, again, are sometimes red 
inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, fairy food, 
too beautiful to eat, — apple of the Hesperides, 
apple of the evening sky! 

Excursions, 314, 315. 



[ 2« ] 

LORING'S POND 

May 17, 1852. To Loring's Pond. The different 
color of the water at different times would be worth 
observing. To-day it is full of light and life, the breeze 
presenting many surfaces to the sun. There is a 
sparkling shimmer on it. It is a deep, dark blue, as 
the sky is clear. The air everywhere is, as it were, 
full of the rippling of waves. This pond is the more 
interesting for the islands in it. The water is seen 
running behind them, and it is pleasant to know that 
it penetrates quite behind and isolates the land you 
see, or to see it apparently flowing out from behind 
an island with shining ripples. 

Journal, iv, 60. 

A LILAC BUSH — THE LAST REMNANT 
OF A HOMEi 

Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after 
the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding 
its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked 
by the musing traveller; planted and tended once 
by children's hands, in front-yard plots, — now 
standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving 

* Thoreau's reference in this description is to the Hlac bushes (some of 
which still exist) marking the former residences on Brister's Hill of some 
colored families. The bush in the photograph is more interesting as be- 
ing the sole relic of the old homestead on Conantum to which Thoreau 
refers several times. (See Journal, vol. x, p. 364.) H. W. G. 



L 29 : 

place to new-rising forests; — the last of that stirp, 
sole survivor of that family. Little did the dusky 
children think that the puny slip with its two eyes 
only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow 
of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, 
and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that 
shaded it, and grown man's garden and orchard, 
and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a 
half-century after they had grown up and died, — 
blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that 
first spring. I mark its still tender, civil, cheerful, 
lilac colors. 

Walden, 290. 



C 30 ] 

RHODORA 

May 17, 1853. The rhodora is peculiar for being, 
like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a 
leafless stem. 

May 23. I see the light purple of the rhodora en- 
livening the edges of swamps — another color the 
sun wears. It is a beautiful shrub seen afar, and 
makes a great show from the abundance of its bloom 
unconcealed by leaVes, rising above the andromeda. 
Is it not the most showy high-colored flower or shrub .^^ 
Flowers are the different colors of the sunlight. 

Journal^ v, 163, 185. 

May 17, 1854. The splendid rhodora now sets 
the swamps on fire with its masses of rich color. It 
is one of the first flowers to catch the eye at a dis- 
tance in masses, — so naked, unconcealed by its 
own leaves. 

Journal, vi, 277. 

WILD PINK 

May 30, 1854. The pink is certainly one of the 
finest of our flowers and deserves the place it holds 
in my memory. It is now in its prime on the south 
side of the Hey wood Peak, where it grows luxuriantly 
in dense rounded tufts or hemispheres, raying out 
on every side and presenting an even and regular sur- 



L 31 ] 

face of expanded flowers. It is associated in my mind 
with the first heats of summer, or those which an- 
nounce its near approach. 

Journal, vi, 317, 318. 

June 1, 1853. The tufts of pinks on the side of 
the peak by the pond grow raying out somewhat 
from a centre, somewhat Hke a cyme, on the warm 
dry side-hill, — some a lighter, some a richer and 
darker, shade of pink. With what a variety of colors 
we are entertained! Yet most colors are rare or in 
small doses, presented us as a condiment or spice. 
Much of green, blue, black, and white, but of yellow 
and the different shades of red far less. The eye feasts 
on the colors of flowers as on titbits; they are its 
spices. 

Journal, v, 212. 



c 32 :] 

FERNS IN THE WOODS 

May 26, 1853. Now is the time to walk in low, 
damp maple copses and see the tender, luxuriant 
foliage that has pushed up, mushroom-like, before 
the sun has come to harden it — the ferns of various 
species and in various stages, some now in their most 
perfect and beautiful condition, completely unfolded, 
tender and delicate, but perfect in all their details, 
far more than any lace- work — the most elaborate 
leaf we have. So flat, just from the laundry, as if 
pressed by some invisible flat-iron in the air. Un- 
folding with such mathematical precision in the free 
air, — green, starched and pressed, — might they not 
be transferred, patterns for Mechlin and Brussels.'^ 

Journal, v, 190. 

FLOWERING DOGWOOD {CORNUS FLORIDA) 

May 27, 1853. The Cornus florida now fairly out, 
and the involucres are now not greenish-white but 
white tipped with reddish — like a small flock of 
white birds passing, — ■ three and a half inches in 
diameter, the larger ones, as I find by measuring. 
It is something quite novel in the tree line. 

Journal, v, 192. 

May 24, 1858. To New York by railroad. All 
through Connecticut and New York the white invo- 



C S3 ] 

lucres of the cornel (C. florida), recently expanded, 
some of them reddish or rosaceous, are now con- 
spicuous. It is not quite expanded in Concord. It 
is the most showy indigenous tree now open. 

Journal, x, 442. 



II. SUMMER 



PINCUSHION GALLS 

June 1, 1853. The pincushion galls on young 
white oaks are now among the most beautiful objects 
in the woods, coarse woolly white to appearance, 
spotted with bright red or crimson on the exposed 
side. It is remarkable that a mere gall, which at 
first we are inclined to regard as something abnormal, 
should be made so beautiful, as if it were the flower 
of the tree; that a disease, an excrescence, should 
prove, perchance, the greatest beauty, — as the 
tear of the pearl. 

Journal, v, 210. 

A NIGHTHAWK'S NEST 

June 1, 1853. Walking up this side-hill, I dis- 
turbed a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me, which 
went, half fluttering, half hopping, the mottled 
creature, down the hill as far as I could see. Without 
moving, I looked about and saw its two eggs on the 
bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, without 
any cavity or nest whatever, very obvious when once 
you had detected them, but not easily detected from 
their color, — a coarse gray formed of white spotted 
with a bluish or slaty brown or umber, a stone — 
granite — color, like the places it selects. I advanced 
and put my hand on them, and while I stooped, seeing 
a shadow on the ground, looked up and saw the bird. 



: 37 ] 

which had fluttered down the hill so blind and helpless, 
circling low and swiftly past over my head, showing 
the white spot on each wing in true nighthawk fashion. 
When I had gone a dozen rods, it appeared again 
higher in the air, with its peculiar flitting, limping 
kind of flight, all the while noiseless, and, suddenly 
descending, it dashed at me within ten feet of my 
head, like an imp of darkness, then swept away high 
over the pond, dashing now to this side now to that, 
on different tacks, as if, in pursuit of its prey, it 
had already forgotten its eggs on the earth, I can 
see how it might easily come to be regarded with 
superstitious awe. 

Journal, v, 214, 215. 



[ 38 :] 

RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS AND NEST 

June 1, 1857. A red-wing's nest, four eggs, low 
in a tuft of sedge in an open meadow. What Cham- 
pollion can translate the hieroglyphics on these 
eggs? It is always writing of the same character, 
though much diversified. While the bird picks up 
the material and lays the egg, who determines the 
style of the marking? When you approach, away 
dashes the dark mother, betraying her nest, and then 
chatters her anxiety from a neighboring bush, where 
she is soon joined by the red-shouldered male, who 
comes scolding over your head, chattering and utter- 
ing a sharp phe-phee-e. 

Journal, ix, 397. 

June 6, 1856. How well suited the lining of a 
bird's nest, not only for the comfort of the young, 
but to keep the eggs from breaking! Fine elastic 
grass stems or root-fibres, pine-needles, or hair, or 
the like. These tender and brittle things which you 
can hardly carry in cotton lie there without harm. 

Journal, viii, 368. 

July 30, 1852. What a gem is a bird's egg, espe- 
cially a blue or a green one, when you see one, broken 
or whole, in the woods! I noticed a small blue egg 
this afternoon washed up by Flint's Pond and half 
buried by white sand, and as it lay there, alternately 



i S9 ] 

wet and dry, no color could be fairer, no gem could 
have a more advantageous or favorable setting. 
Probably it was shaken out of some nest which over- 
hung the water. I frequently meet with broken egg- 
shells where a crow, perchance, or some thief has 
been marauding. And is not that shell something 
very precious that houses that winged life.'* 

Journal, iv, 268, 269. 



[40] 



CLINTONIA 

June 2, 1853. Clintonia borealis, a day or two. 
This is perhaps the most interesting and neatest of 
what I may call the liliaceous plants we have. Its 
beauty at present consists chiefly in its commonly 
three very handsome, rich, clear dark-green leaves. 
They are perfect in form and color, broadly oblan- 
ceolate with a deep channel down the middle, un- 
injured by insects, arching over from a centre at the 
ground, sometimes very symmetrically disposed in a 
triangular fashion; and from their midst rises the 
scape a foot high, with one or more umbels of "green 
bell-shaped flowers," yellowish-green, nodding or 
bent downward, but without fragrance. In fact, 
the flower is all green, both leaves and corolla. The 
leaves alone — and many have no scape — would 
detain the walker. Its berries are its flower. A 
single plant is a great ornament in a vase, from 
the beauty of its form and the rich, unspotted green 
of its leaves. 

Journal, v, 218, 219. 



C 41 ] 

June 13, 1852. The Clintonia horealis (Gray) is a 
handsome and perfect flower, though not high-col- 
ored. I prefer it to some more famous. But Gray 
should not name it from the Governor of New 
York. What is he to the lovers of flowers in Massa- 
chusetts.^ If named after a man, it must be a man 
of flowers. Rhode Island botanists may as well name 
the flowers after their governors as New York. Name 
your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please, 
but his name is not associated with flowers.^ 

Journal, iv, 95. 

^ The Clintonia was so named by Rafinesque, in 1832, not by Dr. 
Gray, in honor of Governor De Witt Clinton, who was a naturalist of 
some note, although chiefly famous in connection with the building of the 
Erie Canal. H. W. G. 



C 42 ] 

EARLY MORNING FOG FROM 
NAWSHAWTUCT HILL 

June 2, 1853. 4 a.m. To Nawshawtuct. I go to 
the river in a fog through which I cannot see more 
than a dozen rods, — three or four times as deep as 
the houses. . . . Now I have reached the hilltop 
above the fog at a quarter to five, about sunrise, and 
all around me is a sea of fog, level and white, reaching 
nearly to the top of this hill, only the tops of a few 
high hills appearing as distant islands in the main. 
It is just like the clouds beneath you as seen from a 
mountain. It is a perfect level in some directions, 
cutting the hills near their summits with a geometri- 
cal line, but puffed up here and there, and more and 
more toward the east, by the influence of the sun. It 
resembles nothing so much as the ocean. You can 
get here the impression which the ocean makes, 
without ever going to the shore. Men — poor sim- 
pletons as they are — will go to a panorama by fami- 
lies, to see a Pilgrim's Progress, perchance, who never 
yet made progress so far as to the top of such a hill 
as this at the dawn of a foggy morning. All the fog 
they know is in their brains. The seashore exhibits 
nothing more grand or on a larger scale. How grand 
where it rolls off northeastward over Ball's Hill like 
a glorious ocean after a storm, just lit by the rising 
sun! It is as boundless as the view from the high- 
lands of Cape Cod. They are exaggerated billows, 



the ocean on a larger scale, the sea after some tre- 
mendous and unheard-of storm, for the actual sea 
never appears so tossed up and universally white 
with foam and spray as this now far in the north- 
eastern horizon, where mountain billows are break- 
ing on some hidden reef or bank. It is tossed up 
toward the sun and by it into the most boisterous of 
seas, which no craft, no ocean steamer, is vast enough 
to sail on. 

Journal, v, 216, 217. 



44 J 



BUTTERCUPS BY THE ROADSIDE 

June 4, 1860. The clear brightness of June was 
well represented yesterday by the buttercups along 
the roadside. Their yellow so glossy and varnished 
within, but not without. Surely there is no reason 
why the new butter should not be yellow now. 

Journal, xiii, 328. 

LUPINES 1 

June 5, 1852. The lupine is now in its glory. It is 
the more important because it occurs in such ex- 
tensive patches, even an acre or more together, and 
of such a pleasing variety of colors, — purple, pink, 
or lilac, and white, — especially with the sun on it, 
when the transparency of the flower makes its color 
changeable. It paints a whole hillside with its blue, 
making such a field (if not meadow) as Proserpine 
might have wandered in. Its leaf was made to be 
covered with dewdrops. I am quite excited by this 
prospect of blue flowers in clumps with narrow inter- 
vals. Such a profusion of the heavenly, the elysian, 
color, as if these were the Elysian Fields. They say 
the seeds look like babies' faces, and hence the flower 
is so named. No other flowers exhibit so much blue. 

^ For various reasons (chiefly increased pasturage) the lupines in Con- 
cord have largely disappeared. Repeated visits to the localities noted 
by Thoreau have failed to reveal more than an occasional straggling 
plant. H. W. G. 



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[; 45 ] 

That is the value of the lupine. The earth is blued 
with them. Yet a third of a mile distant I do not 
detect their color on the hillside. Perchance because 
it is the color of the air. It is not distinct enough. 
You passed along here, perchance, a fortnight ago, 
and the hillside was comparatively barren, but now 
you come and these glorious redeemers appear to 
have flashed out here all at once. Who planted the 
seeds of lupines in the barren soil.^* Who watereth 
the lupines in the fields.'* 

Journal, iv, 81, 82. 



[ 46 ] 

LADY'S-SLIPPERS 

June 5, 1856. Everywhere now in dry pitch pine 
woods stand the red lady's-sHppers over the red pine 
leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with 
their two broad curving green leaves, — some even 
in swamps, — upholding their rich, striped, red, 
drooping sacks. 

Journal, viii, 365. 

WILD CALLA LILY {CALLA PALUSTRIS) 

June 7, 1857. To river and Ponkawtasset with 
M. Pratt. 

Pratt has got the CalJa palustris, in prime, — some 
was withering, so it may have been out ten days, — 
from the bog near Bateman's Pond; also Oxalis 
violacea, which he says began about last Sunday. 

Journal, ix, 409. 

June 9, 1857. To Violet Sorrel and Calla Swamp. ^ 
The calla is generally past prime and going to seed. 

I had said to Pratt, "It will be worth the while 
to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I 
have observed that where one rare plant grows there 

^ This illustrates Thoreau's habit of giving names of his own choosing 
to certain localities in Concord, the particular names oftentimes being 
suggested by the discovery of some rare plant, as in this case. Minot 
Pratt was a devoted lover of plants and introduced a number of wild 
species not previously found in Concord. He was one of the few residents 
of Concord who appreciated Thoreau's outdoor studies. H. W. G. 



c 47 n 

will commonly be others." Carrying out this design, 
this afternoon, I had not taken three steps into the 
swamp barelegged before I found the Naumbergia 
thyrsiflora [tufted loosestrife] in sphagnum and water, 
which I had not seen growing before. 

Journal, ix, 411. 

July 2, 1857. To Go wing's Swamp. Calla palus- 
tris (with its convolute point like the cultivated) at 
the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found 
this in one place, I now find it in another. Many an 
object is not seen, though it falls within the range of 
our visual ray, because it does not come within the 
range of our intellectual eye, i.e., we are not looking 
for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world 
we look for. 

Journal, ix, 466. 



[ 48 ] 

GREAT FRINGED ORCHIS 

June 8, 1854. Find the great fringed orchis out 
apparently two or three days. Two are almost fully 
out, two or three only budded. A large spike of pe- 
culiarly delicate pale-purple flowers growing in the 
luxuriant and shady swamp amid hellebores, ferns, 
golden senecios, etc. It is remarkable that this, one 
of the fairest of all our flowers, should also be one of 
the rarest, — for the most part not seen at all. I think 
that no other but myself in Concord annually finds 
it. That so queenly a flower should annually bloom 
so rarely and in such withdrawn and secret places 
as to be rarely seen by man! The village belle never 
sees this more delicate belle of the swamp. How little 
relation between our life and its! Most of us never 
see it or hear of it. The seasons go by to us as if it 
were not. A beauty reared in the shade of a convent, 
who has never strayed beyond the convent bell. 

Journal, vi, 337, 338. 

June 15, 1852. Here also, at Well Meadow Head, 
I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beauti- 
ful, though a pale lilac purple, — a large spike of 
purple flowers. Why does it grow there only, far in 
a swamp, remote from public view.^^ It is somewhat 
fragrant, reminding me of the lady's-slipper. Is it 
not significant that some rare and delicate and beau- 
tiful flowers should be found only in unfrequented 



C 49 ] 

wild swamps? There is the mould in which the orchis 
grows. Yet I am not sure but this is a fault in the 
flower. It is not quite perfect in all its parts. A beau- 
tiful flower must be simple, not spiked. It must have 
a fair stem and leaves. This stem is rather naked, 
and the leaves are for shade and moisture. It is fair- 
est seen rising from amid brakes and hellebore, its 
lower part or rather naked stem concealed. Where 
the most beautiful wild-flowers grow, there man's 
spirit is fed, and poets grow. It cannot be high-col- 
ored, growing in the shade. Nature has taken no 
pains to exhibit it, and few that bloom are ever seen 
by mortal eyes. The most striking and handsome 
large wild-flower of the year thus far that I have 
seen. 

Journal, iv, 103, 104. 



C 50 ] 

WHITE POND 

June 14, 1853. To White Pond. How beautifully 
the northeast shore curves! The pines and other 
trees so perfect on their water side. There is no raw- 
ness nor imperfection to the edge of the wood in this 
case, as where an axe has cleared, or a cultivated 
field abuts on it; but the eye rises by natural grada- 
tions from the low shrubs, the alders, of the shore 
to the higher trees. It is a natural selvage. It is com- 
paratively unaffected by man. The water laves the 
shore as it did a thousand years ago. Such curves in 
a wood bordering on a field do not affect us as when 
it is a winding shore of a lake. This is a firmer edge. 
It will not be so easily torn. 

Journal, v, 251. 

MOUNTAIN LAUREL 

June 23, 1852. The mountain laurel, with its milk- 
white flower, in cool and shady woods, reminds one 
of the vigor of nature. It is perhaps a first-rate flower, 
considering its size and evergreenness. Its flower- 
buds, curiously folded in a ten-angled pyramidal 
form, are remarkable. A profusion of flowers, with an 
innocent fragrance. It reminds me of shady moun- 
tainsides where it forms the underwood. 

Journal, iv, 130. 



[ SI 1 

June 17, 1853. The mountain laurel by Walden 
in its prime. It is a splendid flower, and more red 
than that in Mason's pasture.^ Its dry, dead-look- 
ing, brittle stems, as it were leaning over other 
bushes or each other, bearing at the ends great dense 
corymbs five inches in diameter of rose or pink tinged 
flowers, without an interstice between them, over- 
lapping each other, each often more than an inch in 
diameter. A single one of which would be esteemed 
very beautiful. It is a highlander wandered down 
into the plain. 

Journal, v, 269, 270. 

^ A single bush of mountain laurel is still to be found in Mason's pas- 
ture, but with the exception of where it has been planted for the adorn- 
ment of private estates the mountain laurel in Concord (as Thoreau says 
in another place) is " as rare as poetry." H. W. G. 



C 52 ] 
TREES REFLECTED IN THE RIVER 

June 15, 1840. I stood by the river to-day consid- 
ering the forms of the ehiis reflected in the water. 
For every oak and birch, too, growing on the hill- 
top, as well as for elms and willows, there is a grace- 
ful ethereal tree making down from the roots, as it 
were the original idea of the tree, and sometimes 
Nature in high tides brings her mirror to its foot 
and makes it visible. Anxious Nature sometimes re- 
flects from pools and puddles the objects which our 
grovelling senses may fail to see relieved against the 
sky with the pure ether for background. 

It would be well if we saw ourselves as in perspec- 
tive always, impressed with distinct outline on the 
sky, side by side with the shrubs on the river's brim. 
So let our life stand to heaven as some fair, sunlit 
tree against the western horizon, and by sunrise be 
planted on some eastern hill to glisten in the first 
rays of the dawn. 

Journal, i, 139, 140. 

Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there 
is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy 
running aground. We notice that it required a sep- 
arate intention of the eye, a more free and abstracted 
vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to 
see the river bottom merely; and so there are mani- 
fold visions in the direction of every object, and even 



C 53 ] 

the most opaque reflect the heavens from their sur- 
face. Some men have their eyes naturally intended 
to the one and some to the other object. Two men 
in a skiff, whom we passed hereabouts, floating 
buoyantly amid the reflections of the trees, like a 
feather in mid-air, or a leaf which is wafted gently 
from its twig to the water without turning over, 
seemed still in their element, and to have delicately 
availed themselves of the natural laws. Their float- 
ing there was a beautiful and successful experiment 
in natural philosophy, and it served to ennoble in 
our eyes the art of navigation; for as birds fly and 
fishes swim, so these men sailed. It reminded us how 
much fairer and nobler all the actions of man might 
be, and that our life in its whole economy might be 
as beautiful as the fairest works of art or nature. 
Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 47, 48. 



[ 54 ;] 



WILD ROSES 

June 15, 1853. Here are many wild roses north- 
east of Trillium Woods. We are liable to underrate 
this flower on account of its commonness. Is it not 
the queen of our flowers,'^ How ample and high- 
colored its petals, glancing half concealed from its 
own green bowers ! There is a certain noble and deli- 
cate civility about it, — not wildness. It is prop- 
erly the type of the Rosaceoe, or flowers among others 
of most wholesome fruits. It is at home in the garden, 
as readily cultivated as apples. It is the pride of 
June. In summing up its attractions I should men- 
tion its rich color, size, and form, the rare beauty 
of its bud, its fine fragrance, and the beauty of the 
entire shrub, not to mention the almost innumer- 
able varieties it runs into. I bring home the buds 
ready to expand, put them in a pitcher of water, and 
the next morning they open and fill my chamber with 
fragrance. This, found in the wilderness, must have 
reminded the Pilgrim of home. 

Journal, v, 256. 



[ SB ] 

June 25, 1852. Methinks roses oftenest display 
their high colors, colors which invariably attract all 
eyes and betray them, against a dark ground, as the 
dark green or the shady recesses of the bushes and 
copses, where they show to best advantage. Their 
enemies do not spare the open flower for an hour. 
Hence, if for no other reason, their buds are most 
beautiful. Their promise of perfect and dazzling 
beauty, when their buds are just beginning to ex- 
pand, — beauty which they can hardly contain, — 
as in most youths, commonly surpasses the fulfill- 
ment of their expanded flowers. The color shows 
fairest and brightest in the bud. 

Journal, iv, 142. 



[ 56 ] 



WATER-LILIES 

June 19, 1853. Exquisitely beautiful, and unlike 
anything else that we have, is the first white lily 
just expanded in some shallow lagoon where the 
water is leaving it, — perfectly fresh and pure, be- 
fore the insects have discovered it. How admirable 
its purity ! how innocently sweet its fragrance ! How 
significant that the rich, black mud of our dead 
stream produces the water-lily, — out of that fertile 
slime springs this spotless purity ! 

Journal, v, 283. 

June 16, 1854. Again I scent the white water- 
lily, and a season I had waited for is arrived. How 
indispensable all these experiences to make up the 
summer! It is the emblem of purity, and its scent 
suggests it. Growing in stagnant and muddy water, 
it bursts up so pure and fair to the eye and so sweet 
to the scent, as if to show us what purity and sweet- 
ness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime 
and muck of earth. I think I have plucked the first 
one that has opened for a mile at least. What con- 
firmation of our hopes is in the fragrance of the 
water-lily! I shall not so soon despair of the world 



: 57 ] 

for it, notwithstanding slavery, and the cowardice 
and want of principle of the North. ^ It suggests that 
the time may come when men's deeds will smell as 
sweet. Such, then, is the odor our planet emits. Who 
can doubt, then, that Nature is young and sound? 
If Nature can compound this fragrance still annu- 
ally, I shall believe her still full of vigor, and that 
there is virtue in man, too, who perceives and loves 
it. It is as if all the pure and sweet and virtuous was 
extracted from the slime and decay of earth and 
presented thus in a flower. The resurrection of vir- 
tue! . . . The foul slime stands for the sloth and 
vice of man; the fragrant flower that springs from 
it, for the purity and courage which springs from its 
midst. It is these sights and sounds and fragrances 
put together that convince us of our immortality. 

Journal, vi, 352, 353. 

^ An instance of Thoreau's intense feeling on the slavery question, 
which found extended expression in his famous addresses on John Brown. 
(See the volume Cape Cod and Miscellanies, pp. 409 and 441; also nu- 
merous entries in the Journal, vols, xii and xiii.) H. W. G. 



C 58 ] 

ORIENTATION OF YOUNG PINE SHOOTS 

June 23, 1852. There are interesting groves of 
young soft white pines eighteen feet high, whose 
vigorous yellowish-green shoots of this season, from 
three to eighteen inches long, at the extremities of 
all the branches, contrast remarkably with the dark 
green of the old leaves. I observe that these shoots 
are bent, and, what is more remarkable, all one way, 
i.e., to the east, almost at a right angle the topmost 
ones, and I am reminded of the observation in 
Henry's Adventures, that the Indians guided them- 
selves in cloudy weather by this mark. All these 
shoots, excepting those low down on the east side, 
are bent toward the east. I am very much pleased 
with this observation, confirming that of the Indians. 
I was singularly impressed when I first observed 
that all the young pines in this pasture obeyed this 
law, without regard to the direction of the wind or 
the shelter of other trees. To make myself more 
sure of the direction, as it was not easy to determine 
it exactly, standing on one side, where so many 
shoots were bent in the air, I went behind the trees 
on the west till the bent shoot appeared as a straight 
line, and then, by observing my shadow and guess- 
ing at the time of day, I decided that their direction 
was due east. This gives me more satisfaction than 
any observation which I have made for a long time. 
This is true of the rapidly growing shoots. How long 



L 59 ] 

will this phenomenon avail to guide the traveller? 
How soon do they become erect? A natural com- 
pass. How few civilized men probably have ever 
made this observation, so important to the savage! 
How much may there have been known to his wood- 
craft which has not been detected by science! At 
first I remarked the shoots of a distinct yellowish 
green, contrasting with the rest of the tree, then that 
they were not upright but bent more or less, and next 
that they were all inclined one way, as if bent by 
the wind, and finally that they were all bent east, 
without regard to the wind.^ 

Journal, iv, 136, 137. 

^ In his journal entry for the next day, describing a trip to White 
Pond, Thoreau frankly but sadly remarks: "I am disappointed to no- 
tice to-day that most of the pine-tops incline to the west, as if the wind 
had to do with it." 



[ 60 ] 

A JUNE LANDSCAPE FROM FAIR 
HAVEN HILL 

June 30, 1860. Generally speaking, the fields are 
not imbrowned yet, but the freshness of the year is 
preserved. Standing on the side of Fair Haven Hill 
the verdure generally appears at its height, the air 
clear, and the water sparkling (after the rain of yes- 
terday), and it is a world of glossy leaves and grassy 
fields and meads. 

Seen through this clear, sparkling, breezy air, the 
fields, woods, and meadows are very brilliant and 
fair. The leaves are now hard and glossy (the oldest), 
yet still comparatively fresh, and I do not see a single 
acre of grass that has been cut yet. The river mead- 
ows on each side the stream, looking toward the 
light, have an elysian beauty. A light-yellow plush 
or velvet, as if some gamboge had been rubbed into 
them. They are by far the most bright and sunny- 
looking spots, such is the color of the sedges which 
grow there, while the pastures and hillsides are dark- 
green and the grain-fields glaucous-green. 

Journal, xiii, 380. 

WHITE CLOVER 

June 29, 1851. There is a great deal of white 
clover this year. In many fields where there has 
been no clover seed sown for many years at least,. 




'.jm'':^ ^* \^ 



^. ^'^f%" 



m-m 







C 61 n 

it is more abundant than the red, and the heads are 
nearly as large. Also pastures which are close cropped, 
and where I think there was little or no clover 
last year, are spotted white with a humbler growth. 
And everywhere, by roadsides, garden borders, etc., 
even where the sward is trodden hard, the small 
white heads on short stems are sprinkled every- 
where. As this is the season for the swarming of 
bees, and this clover is very attractive to them, it is 
probably the more difficult to secure them; at any 
rate it is the more important to secure their services 
now that they can make honey so fast. It is an in- 
teresting inquiry why this year is so favorable to the 
growth of clover. 

Journal, ii, 271, 272. 



[ 62 ] 

TARBELL'S SPRING 

July 5, 1852. How cheering it is to behold a full 
spring bursting forth directly from the earth, like 
this of Tarbell's, from clean gravel, copiously, in a 
thin sheet; for it descends at once, where you see 
no opening, cool from the caverns of the earth, and 
making a considerable stream. Such springs, in the 
sale of lands, are not valued for as much as they are 
worth. I lie almost flat, resting my hands on what 
offers, to drink at this water where it bubbles, at the 
very udders of Nature, for man is never weaned from 
her breast while this life lasts. How many times in 
a single walk does he stoop for a draught! 

Journal, iv, 188. 

July 12, 1857. I drink at every cooler spring in 
my walk these afternoons and love to eye the bot- 
tom there, with its pebbly caddis-cases, or its white 
worms, or perchance a luxurious frog cooling himself 
next my nose. Sometimes the farmer, foreseeing hay- 
ing, has been prudent enough to sink a tub in one, 
which secures a clear deep space. . . . When a spring 
has been allowed to fill up, to be muddied by cattle, 
or, being exposed to the sun by cutting down the 
trees and bushes, to dry up, it affects me sadly, like 
an institution going to decay. Sometimes I see, on 
one side the tub, — the tub overhung with various 
wild plants and flowers, its edge almost completely 



t 63 ] 

concealed even from the searching eye, — the white 
sand freshly cast up where the spring is bubbling in. 
Often I sit patiently by the spring I have cleaned 
out and deepened with my hands, and see the foul 
water rapidly dissipated like a curling vapor and 
giving place to the cool and clear. Sometimes I can 
look a yard or more into a crevice under a rock, 
toward the sources of a spring in a hillside, and see 
it come cool and copious with incessant murmuring 
down to the light. There are few more refreshing 
sights in hot weather. 

Journal, ix, 477, 478. 



i: 64 ] 

A WAVING RYE-FIELD 

July 8, 1851. Here are some rich rye-fields wav- 
ing over all the land, their heads nodding in the eve- 
ning breeze with an apparently alternating motion; 
i.e., they do not all bend at once by ranks, but sepa- 
rately, and hence this agreeable alternation. How rich 
a sight this cereal fruit, now yellow for the cradle, — 
flavus ! It is an impenetrable phalanx. I walk for half 
a mile beside these Macedonians, looking in vain for 
an opening. There is no Arnold Winkelried to gather 
these spear-heads upon his breast and make an open- 
ing for me. This is food for man. The earth labors 
not in vain; it is bearing its burden. The yellow, wav- 
ing, rustling rye extends far up and over the hills on 
either side, a kind of pinafore to nature, leaving only 
a narrow and dark passage at the bottom of a deep 
ravine. How rankly it has grown! How it hastes to 
maturity! I discover that there is such a goddess 
as Ceres. These long grain-fields which you must 
respect, — must go round, — occupying the ground 
like an army. The small trees and shrubs seen dimly 
in its midst are overwhelmed by the grain as by an 
inundation. They are seen only as indistinct forms of 
bushes and green leaves mixed with the yellow stalks. 
There are certain crops which give me the idea of 
bounty, of the Alma Natura. They are the grains. 
Potatoes do not so fill the lap of earth. This rye ex- 
cludes everything else and takes possession of the soil. 



C 65 ] 

The farmer says, "Next year I will raise a crop of 
rye"; and he proceeds to clear away the brush, and 
either plows it, or, if it is too uneven or stony, burns 
and harrows it only, and scatters the seed with faith. 
And all winter the earth keeps his secret, — unless 
it did leak out somewhat in the fall, — and in the 
spring this early green on the hillsides betrays him. 
When I see this luxuriant crop spreading far and 
wide in spite of rock and bushes and unevenness of 
ground, I cannot help thinking that it must have been 
unexpected by the farmer himself, and regarded by 
him as a lucky accident for which to thank fortune. 

Journal, ii, 293, 294. 



C 66 ] 

YELLOW AND RED LILIES 

July 19, 185L Heavily hangs the common yellow 
lily {Lilium Canadense) in the meadows. 

Journal, ii, 320. 

July 7, 1852. When the yellow lily flowers in the 
meadows, and the red in dry lands and by wood- 
paths, then, methinks, the flowering season has 
reached its height. They surprise me as perhaps no 
more can. Now I am prepared for anything. 

Journal, iv, 201. 

July 9, 1852. The red lily, with its torrid color and 
sun-freckled spots, dispensing, too, with the outer 
garment of a calyx, its petals so open and wide apart 
that you can see through it in every direction, tells 
of hot weather. It is a handsome bell shape, so up- 
right, and the flower prevails over every other part» 
It belongs not to spring. 

Journal, iv, 206, 207. 

July 11, 1852. The yellow lily is not open-petalled 
like the red, nor is its flower upright, but drooping. 
On the whole I am most attracted by the red. They 
both make freckles beautiful. 

Journal, iv, 219. 



[67 ] 

Having reloaded, we paddled down the Penob- 
scot, which, as the Indian remarked, and even I de- 
tected, remembering how it looked before, was un- 
commonly full. We soon after saw a splendid yellow 
lily {Lilium Canadense) by the shore, which I 
plucked. It was six feet high, and had twelve flow- 
ers, in two whorls, forming a pyramid, such as I have 
seen in Concord. We afterward saw many more 
thus tall along this stream, and also still more numer- 
ous on the East Branch, and, on the latter, one which 
I thought approached yet nearer to the Lilium super- 
hum. The Indian asked what we called it, and said 
that the "loots" (roots) were good for soup, that is, 
to cook with meat, to thicken it, taking the place of 
flour. They get them in the fall. I dug some, and 
found a mass of bulbs pretty deep in the earth, two 
inches in diameter, looking, and even tasting, some- 
what like raw green corn on the ear. 

The Maine Woods, 209. 



[ 6'8 3 

AN OLD UNFREQUENTED ROAD 

July 21, 1851. Now I yearn for one of those 
old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads, which lead 
away from towns, which lead us away from temp- 
tation, which conduct to the outside of earth, over 
its uppermost crust; where you may forget in what 
country you are travelling; where no farmer can 
complain that you are treading down his grass, no 
gentleman who has recently constructed a seat in the 
country that you are trespassing; . . . along which 
you may travel like a pilgrim, going nowhither; where 
travellers are not too often to be met ; . . . where the 
walls and fences are not cared for; where your head 
is more in heaven than your feet are on earth; . . . 
w^iere it makes no odds which way you face, whether 
you are going or coming, whether it is morning or 
evening, mid-noon or midnight; where earth is cheap 
enough by being public; where you can walk and 
think with least obstruction, there being nothing to 
measure progress by; where you can pace when 
your breast is full, and cherish your moodiness; 
where you are not in false relations with men, are 
not dining nor conversing with them; by which you 
may go to the uttermost parts of the earth. 

Journal, ii, 322. 



C 69 ] . 

July 23, 1851. On such a road (the Corner) i I 
walk securely, seeing far and wide on both sides, as 
if I were flanked by light infantry on the hills, to rout 
the provincials, as the British marched into Concord, 
while my grenadier thoughts keep the main road. 
That is, my light-armed and wandering thoughts 
scour the neighboring fields, and so I know if the 
coast is clear. With what a breadth of van I advance! 
I am not bounded by the walls. I think more than 
the road full. 

Journal, ii, 339. 

' Thoreau would hardly apostrophize the Corner road {i.e., the road 
to Nine-Acre Corner) to-day, for it has been carefully graded and mac- 
adamized; the root fences, the little brook crossing the road, and other 
features so attractive to him have disappeared, and there are plenty of 
"No Trespassing" signs on either hand. Instead of walking securely, 
his "grenadier thoughts" would be chiefly occupied in the effort to avoid 
disaster from the frequently passing automobiles! H. W. G. 



C 70 ] 

BLUEBERRIES AND HUCKLEBERRIES 

July 24, 1853. The berries of the Vaccinium vacil- 
lans [low blueberry] are very abundant and large 
this year on Fair Haven, where I am now. Indeed, 
these and huckleberries and blackberries are very 
abundant in this part of the town. Nature does her 
best to feed man. The traveller need not go out of 
the road to get as many as he wants ; every bush and 
vine teems with palatable fruit. Man for once stands 
in such relation to Nature as the animals that pluck 
and eat as they go. The fields and hills are a table 
constantly spread. Wines of all kinds and qualities, 
of noblest vintage, are bottled up in the skins of 
countless berries, for the taste of men and animals. 
To men they seem offered not so much for food as for 
sociality, that they may picnic with Nature, — diet 
drinks, cordials, wines. We pluck and eat in remem- 
brance of Her. It is a sacrament, a communion. The 
not-forbidden fruits, which no serpent tempts us to 
taste. Slight and innocent savors, which relate us to 
Nature, make us her guests and entitle us to her 
regard and protection. It is a Saturnalia, and we 
quaff her wines at every turn. This season of berry- 
ing is so far respected that the children have a vaca- 
tion to pick berries, and women and children who 
never visit distant hills and fields and swamps on 
any other errand are seen making haste thither now, 
with half their domestic utensils in their hands. The 



C 71 ] ■ 

woodchopper goes into the swamp for fuel in the win- 
ter; his wife and children for berries in the summer. 

Journal, v, 330, 331. 

July 6, 185^2. The early blueberries ripen first on 
the hills, before those who confine themselves to the 
lowlands are aware of it. When the old folks find 
only one turned here and there, children, who are 
best acquainted with the locality of berries, bring 
pailfuls to sell at their doors. For birds' nests and 
berries, give me a child's eyes. But berries must be 
eaten on the hills, and then how far from the sur- 
feiting luxury of an alderman's dinner! 

Journal, iv, 196. 



[ 72 ] 
YEW BERRY 

August 10, 1858. Am surprised to find the yew 
with ripe fruit, where I had not detected fertile 
flowers. It fruits very sparingly, the berries grow- 
ing singly here and there, on last year's wood, and 
hence four to six inches below the extremities of the 
upturned twigs. It is the most surprising berry that 
we have : first, since it is borne by an evergreen, hem- 
lock-like bush with which we do not associate a soft 
and bright-colored berry, and hence its deep scarlet 
contrasts the more strangely with the pure, dark 
evergreen needles; and secondly, because of its form, 
so like art, and which could be easily imitated in wax, 
a very thick scarlet cup or mortar with a dark-purple 
bead set at the bottom. My neighbors are not pre- 
pared to believe that such a berry grows in Concord. 

Journal, xi, 90, 91. 

RATTLESNAKE-PLANTAIN 

August 19, 1851. By the Marlborough road I 
notice the richly veined leaves of the NeoUia pubes- 
cens, or veined neottia, rattlesnake-plantain. I like 
this last name very well, though it might not be easy 
to convince a quibbler or proser of its fitness. We 
want some name to express the mystic wildness of its 
rich leaves. Such work as men imitate in their em- 
broidery, unaccountably agreeable to the eye, as if it 



Z 73 1 

answered its end only when it met the eye of man; a 
reticulated leaf, visible only on one side; little things 
which make one pause in the woods, take captive 
the eye. 

Journal, ii, 407. 

August 27, 1856. These oval leaves [of the rattle- 
snake-plantain], perfectly smooth like velvet to the 
touch, about one inch long, have a broad white mid- 
rib and four to six longitudinal white veins, very 
prettily and thickly connected by other conspicuous 
white veins transversely and irregularly, all on a 
dark rich green ground. Is it not the prettiest leaf 
that paves the forest floor.'* 

Journal, ix, 28. 



[ 74 ] 



ROSE MALLOW (MARSH HIBISCUS) 

August 16, 1852. Hibiscus Moscheutos (?), marsh 
hibiscus, apparently, N. Barrett's. Perchance has 
been out a week. I think it must be the most con- 
spicuous and showy and at the same time rich- 
colored flower of this month. It is not so conspicuous 
as the sunflower, but of a rarer color, — "pale rose- 
purple," they call it, — like a hollyhock. It is sur- 
prising for its amount of color, and, seen unexpect- 
edly amid the willows and button-bushes, with the 
mikania twining around its stem, you can hardly 
believe it is a flower, so large and tender it looks, like 
the greatest effort of the season to adorn the August 
days, and reminded me of that great tender moth, 
the Attacus luna, which I found on the water near 
where it grows. I think it must be allied to southern 
species. It suggests a more genial climate and luxu- 
riant soil. It requires these vaporous dog-days. 

Journal, iv, 297, 298 



C 75 ] 

August 18, 1852. To Joe Clark's and Hibiscus 
Bank. . . . The hibiscus flowers are seen a quarter of 
a mile off over the water, like large roses, now that 
these high colors are rather rare. Some are exceed- 
ingly delicate and pale, almost white, just rose- 
tinted, others a brighter pink or rose-color, and all 
slightly plaited (the five large petals) and turned 
toward the sun, now in the west, trembling in the 
wind. So much color looks very rich in these locali- 
ties. The flowers are some four inches in diameter, 
as large as water-lilies, rising amid and above the 
button-bushes and willows, with a large light-green 
tree-like leaf and a stem half an inch in diameter, 
apparently dying down to a perennial (?) root each 
year. A superb flower. Where it occurs it is certainly, 
next to the white lily, if not equally with it, the most 
splendid ornament of the river. ... As I made excur- 
sions on the river when the white lilies were in bloom, 
so now I should make a hibiscus excursion. 

Journal, iv, 299, SOI. 



C 76 ] 



CINNAMON FERNS IN CLINTONIA 
SWAMP 

August 23, 1858. I go through [Chntonia Swamp], 
wading through the luxuriant cinnamon fern, which 
has complete possession of the swamp floor. Its 
great fronds, curving this way and that, remind me 
of a tropical vegetation. They are as high as my 
head and about a foot wide; may stand higher than 
my head without being stretched out. They grow 
in tufts of a dozen, so close that their fronds inter- 
lace and form one green waving mass. There in the 
swamp cellar under the maples. A forest of maples 
rises from a forest of ferns. My clothes are covered 
with the pale-brown wool which I have rubbed off 
their stems. 

Journal, xi, 118. 

September 24, 1859. Stedman Buttrick's hand- 
some maple and pine swamp is full of cinnamon ferns. 
I stand on the elevated road, looking down into it. 
The trees are very tall and slender, without branches 
for a long distance. All the ground, which is per- 
fectly level, is covered and concealed, as are the 
bases of the trees, with the tufts of cinnamon fern, 
now a pale brown. It is a very pretty sight, these 
northern trees springing out of a groundwork of 



C 77 ] 

ferns. It is like pictures of the tropics, except that 
here the palms are the undergrowth. You could not 
have arranged a nosegay more tastefully. It is a 
rich groundwork, out of which the maples and pines 
spring. 

Journal, xii, 344. 



III. AUTUMN 



[ 80 ] 



BEAUTIFUL FUNGI 

September 1, 1856. With R. W. E[merson] to 
Saw Mill [Brook]. We go admiring the pure and deli- 
cate tints of fungi on the surface of the damp swamp 
there, following up along the north side of the brook. 
There are many very beautiful lemon-yellow ones 
of various forms, some shaped like buttons, some 
becoming finely scalloped on the edge, some club- 
shaped and hollow, of the most delicate and rare but 
decided tints, contrasting well with the decaying 
leaves about them. There are others also pure white, 
others a wholesome red, others brown, and some 
even a light indigo-blue above and beneath and 
throughout. When colors come to be taught in the 
schools, as they should be, both the prism (or the 
rainbow) and these fungi should be used by way of 
illustration, and if the pupil does not learn colors, 
he may learn fungi, which perhaps is better. You 
almost envy the wood frogs and toads that hop amid 
such gems, — some pure and bright enough for a 
breastpin. Out of every crevice between the dead 
leaves oozes some vehicle of color, the unspent 
wealth of the year. 

Journal, ix, 50, 51. 



I 8' ] 

October 10, 1858. The simplest and most lump- 
ish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared 
with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously 
organic and related to ourselves, however mute. It 
is the expression of an idea; growth according to a 
law; matter not dormant, not raw, but inspired, 
appropriated by spirit. If I take up a handful of 
earth, however separately interesting the particles 
may be, their relation to one another appears to be 
that of mere juxtaposition generally. I might have 
thrown them together thus. But the humblest fungus 
betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem 
in its kind. There is suggested something superior 
to any particle of matter, in the idea or mind which 
uses and arranges the particles. 

Journal, xi, 204. 



[ 82 ] 

LANE IN FRONT OF TARBELL'S 

September 4, 1851. The lane in front of Tarbell's 
house, which is but Httle worn and appears to lead 
nowhere, though it has so wide and all-engulfing 
an opening, suggested that such things might be 
contrived for effect in laying out grounds. (Only 
those things are sure to have the greatest and best 
effect, which like this were not contrived for the sake 
of effect.) An open path which would suggest walk- 
ing and adventuring on it, the going to some place 
strange and far away. It would make you think of 
or imagine distant places and spaces greater than 
the estate. 

It was pleasant, looking back just beyond, to see 
a heavy shadow (made by some high birches) reach- 
ing quite across the road. Light and shadow are suffi- 
cient contrast and furnish sufficient excitement when 
we are well. 

Now we were passing the vale of Brown and Tar- 
bell, a sunshiny mead pastured by cattle and spark- 
ling with dew, the sound of crows and swallows 
heard in the air, and leafy-columned elms seen here 
and there shining with dew. The morning freshness 
and unworldliness of that domain! The vale of 
Tempe and of Arcady is not farther off than are the 
conscious lives of men from their opportunities. Our 
life is as far from corresponding to its scenery as we 
are distant from Tempe and Arcadia; that is to say, 



[ 83 ] 

they are far away because we are far from living 
natural lives. How absurd it would be to insist on 
the vale of Tempe in particular when we have such 
vales as we have! 

Journal, ii, 454. 



[ 84 ] 



SUNSET ON THE RIVER 

September 6, 1854. There are many clouds about 
and a beautiful sunset sky, a yellowish (dunnish?) 
golden sky, between them in the horizon, looking 
up the river. The beauty of the sunset is doubled 
by the reflection. Being on the water we have double 
the amount of lit and dun-colored sky above and 
beneath. The reflected sky is more dun and richer 
than the real one. Take a glorious sunset sky and 
double it, so that it shall extend downward beneath 
the horizon as much as above it, blotting out the 
earth, and let the lowest half be of the deepest tint, 
and every beauty more than before insisted on, and 
you seem withal to be floating directly into it. It 
was in harmony with this fair evening that we were 
not walking or riding with dust and noise through 
it, but moved by a paddle without a jar over the 
liquid and almost invisible surface, floating directly 
toward those islands of the blessed which we call 
clouds in the sunset sky. 

Journal, vii, 19. 



C 85 ] 

We never tire of the drama of sunset. I go 
forth each afternoon and look into the west a quarter 
of an hour before sunset, with fresh curiosity, to 
see what new picture will be painted there, what 
new panorama exhibited, what new dissolving views. 
Can Washington Street or Broadway show anything 
as good? Every day a new picture is painted and 
framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as 
the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn and 
the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and 
long the afterglow gives light. And then the damask 
curtains glow along the western window. And now 
the first star is lit, and I go home. 

Journal, iii, 179. 



[ 86 ] 

GOLDENROD (SOLIDAGO NEMORALIS) 

September 12, 1859. To Moore's Swamp and 
Great Fields. 

I stand in Moore's Swamp and look at Garfield's 
dry bank, now before the woods generally are 
changed at all. How ruddy ripe that dry hillside by 
the swamp, covered with goldenrods and clumps of 
hazel bushes here and there, now more or less scarlet. 
The goldenrods on the top and the slope of the hill 
are the Solidago nemoralis, at the base the taller 
S. altissima. The whole hillside is perfectly dry and 
ripe. 

Many a dry field now, like that of Sted Buttrick's 
on the Great Fields, is one dense mass of the bright- 
golden recurved wands of the Solidago nemoralis 
(a little past prime), waving in the wind and turning 
upward to the light hundreds, if not a thousand, 
flowerets each. It is the greatest mass of conspicu- 
ous flowers in the year, and uniformly from one to 
two feet high, just rising above the withered grass 
all over the largest fields, now when pumpkins and 
other yellow fruits begin to gleam, now before the 
woods are noticeably changed. Such a mass of yel- 
low for this field's last crop! Who that had botan- 
ized here in the previous month could have foretold 
this more profuse and teeming crop.^^ All ringing, as 
do the low grounds, with the shrilling of crickets and 
locusts and frequented by honey-bees (i.e., the gold- 



i: 87 ] 

enrod nemoralis). The whole field turns to yellow, 
as the cuticle of a ripe fruit. This is the season when 
the prevalence of the goldenrods gives such a ripe 
and teeming look to the dry fields and to the swamps. 
The S. nemoralis spreads its legions over the dry 
plains now, as soldiers muster in the fall. It is a 
muster of all its forces, which I review, eclipsing all 
other similar shows of the year. Fruit of August 
and September, sprung from the sun-dust. The 
fields and hills appear in their yellow uniform. There 
are certain fields so full of them that they might 
give their name to the town or region, as one place 
in England is called Saffron Walden. Perhaps the 
general prevalence of yellow is greater now when 
many individual plants are past prime. 

Journal, xii, 320-22. 



C «8 ] 

FALL ASTERS 1 

September 14, 1856. Now for the Aster Trades- 
canti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming 
with butterflies and bees. Some of them are pink. 
How ever unexpected are these later flowers! You 
thought that Nature had about wound up her affairs. 
You had seen what she could do this year, and had 
not noticed a few weeds by the roadside, or mistook 
them for the remains of summer flowers now has- 
tening to their fall; you thought you knew every 
twig and leaf by the roadside, and nothing more 
was to be looked for there; and now, to your surprise, 
these ditches are crowded with millions of little 
stars. They suddenly spring up and face you, with 
their legions on each side the way, as if they had 
lain in ambuscade there. The flowering of the 
ditches. Call them travellers' thoughts, numerous 
though small, worth a penny at least, which, sown 
in spring and summer, in the fall spring up unob- 
served at first, successively dusted and washed, 
mingled with nettles and beggar-ticks as a highway 
harvest. A starry meteoric shower, a milky way, 
in the flowery kingdom in whose aisles we travel. 
Let the traveller bethink himself, elevate and ex- 
pand his thoughts somewhat, that his successors 
may oftener hereafter be cheered by the sight of an 
Aster Novce-AnglioB or spectabilis here and there, to 

1 The photographs are of the A. Tradescanti and the A. Novce-AnglicB. 



L 89 ] 

remind him that a poet or philosopher has passed 
this way. The gardener with all his assiduity does 
not raise such a variety, nor so many successive 
crops on the same space, as Nature in the very road- 
side ditches. There they have stood, begrimed with 
dust and the wash of the road so long, and made 
acquaintance with passing sheep and cattle and 
swine, gathering a trivial experience, and now at last 
the fall rains have come to wash off some of that 
dust, and even they exhibit these dense flowery pan- 
icles as the result of all that experience, as pure for 
an hour as if they grew by some wild brook-side. 

Journal, ix, 82, 83. 



[ 90 ] 



WITCH-HAZEL 

There is something witchlike in the appearance of 
the witch-hazel, which blossoms late in October and 
in November, with its irregular and angular spray 
and petals like furies' hair, or small ribbon streamers. 
Its blossoming, too, at this irregular period, when 
other shrubs have lost their leaves, as well as blos- 
soms, looks like witches' craft. Certainly it blooms 
in no garden of man's. 

Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 379. 

October 9, 1851. To Conantum. The witch- 
hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside, 
while its broad yellow leaves are falling. It is an ex- 
tremely interesting plant, — October and Novem- 
ber's child, and yet reminds me of the very earliest 
spring. Its blossoms smell like the spring, like the 
willow catkins ; by their color as well as fragrance they 
belong to the saffron dawn of the year, suggesting 
amid all these signs of autumn, falling leaves and 
frost, that the life of Nature, by which she eternally 
flourishes, is untouched. It stands here in the 
shadow on the side of the hill, while the sunlight from 
over the top of the hill lights up its topmost sprays 
and yellow blossoms. Its spray, so jointed and an- 
gular, is not to be mistaken for any other. I lie 
on my back with joy under its boughs. While its 



C 91 ] 

leaves fall, its blossoms spring. The autumn, then, 
is indeed a spring. All the year is a spring. I see two 
blackbirds high overhead, going south, but I am 
going north in my thought with these hazel blossoms. 
It is a faery place. This is a part of the immortality 
of the soul. 

Journal, in, 59, 60. 



[ 92 ] 

OCTOBER REFLECTIONS ON THE 
ASSABET 

October 17, 1858. Up Assabet. Methinks the 
reflections are never purer and more distinct than 
now at the season of the fall of the leaf, just before 
the cool twilight has come, when the air has a finer 
grain. Just as our mental reflections are more dis- 
tinct at this season of the year, when the evenings 
grow cool and lengthen and our winter evenings 
with their brighter fires may be said to begin. 

One reason why I associate perfect reflections from 
still water with this and a later season may be that 
now, by the fall of the leaves, so much more light 
is let in to the water. The river reflects more light, 
therefore, in this twilight of the year, as it were an 
afterglow. 

Journal, xi, 216, 217. 

SUN-LIGHTED TUFTS OF ANDROPOGON 

October 16, 1859. When we emerged from the 
pleasant footpath through the birches into Witherell 
Glade, looking along it toward the westering sun, 
the glittering white tufts of the Andropogon sco- 
parius, lit up by the sun, were affectingly fair and 
cheering to behold, . . . their glowing half raised a 
foot or more above the ground, a lighter and more 
brilliant whiteness than the downiest cloud presents. 



C 93 ] 

How cheerful these cold but bright white waving 
tufts! They reflect all the sun's light without a par- 
ticle of his heat, or yellow rays. A thousand such 
tufts now catch up the sun and send to us his light 
but not heat. His heat is being steadily withdrawn 
from us. Light without heat is getting to be the pre- 
vailing phenomenon of the day now. 

Journal, xii, 391, 392. 

November 8, 1859. The tufts of purplish withered 
andropogon in Witherell Glade are still as fair as 
ever, soft and trembling and bending from the wind; 
of a very light mouse-color seen from the side of the 
sun, and as delicate as the most fragile ornaments 
of a lady's bonnet; but looking toward the sun they 
are a brilliant white, each polished hair (of the pap- 
pus.^) reflecting the November sun without its heats, 
not in the least yellowish or brown like the golden- 
rods and asters. 

Journal, xii, 442. 



C 94 ] 

COBWEB DRAPERY IN BARRETT'S MILL 

October 19, 1858. Ride to Sam Barrett's mill. 
Am pleased again to see the cobweb drapery of the 
mill.i Each fine line hanging in festoons from the 
timbers overhead and on the sides, and on the dis- 
carded machinery lying about, is covered and greatly 
enlarged by a coating of meal, by which its curve 
is revealed, like the twigs under their ridges of snow 
in winter. It is like the tassels and tapestry of coun- 
terpane and dimity in a lady's bedchamber, and I 
pray that the cobwebs may not have been brushed 
away from the mills which I visit. It is as if I were 
aboard a man-of-war, and this were the fine "rig- 
ging" of the mill, the sails being taken in. All things 
in the mill wear the same livery or drapery, down to 
the miller's hat and coat. I knew Barrett forty rods 
off in the cranberry meadow by the meal on his hat. 

Barrett's apprentice, it seems, makes trays of 
black birch and of red maple, in a dark room under 
the mill. I was pleased to see this work done here, a 
wooden tray is so handsome. You could count the 
circles of growth on the end of the tray, and the 
dark heart of the tree was seen at each end above, 
producing a semicircular ornament. It was a satis- 
faction to be reminded that we may so easily make 

1 When this photograph was taken, the miller, on being told the pur- 
pose of the photograph, remarked, "Oh, yes, those are the same cob- 
webs that Thoreau saw here fifty years ago!" H. W. G. 



C 95 ] 

our own trenchers as well as fill them. To see the 
tree reappear on the table, instead of going to the 
fire or some equally coarse use, is some compensa- 
tion for having it cut down. 

Journal xi, 224, 225. 



C 96 ;] 

FRINGED GENTIAN 

October 19, 1852, At 5 p.m. I found the fringed 
gentian now somewhat stale and touched with frost, 
being in the meadow toWard Peter's. Probably on 
high, moist ground it is fresher. It may have been in 
bloom a month. It has been cut off by the mower, 
and apparently has put out in consequence a mass of 
short branches full of flowers. This may make it later. 
I doubt if I can find one naturally grown. At this hour 
the blossoms are tightly rolled and twisted, and I see 
that the bees have gnawed round holes in their sides 
to come at the nectar. They have found them, though 
I had not. "Full many a flower is born to blush un- 
seen" by man. An hour ago I doubted if fringed gen- 
tians were in Concord now, but, having found these, 
they as it were surrender, and I hear of them at the 
bottom of N. Barrett's orchard toward the river, and 
by Tuttle's (?). They are now, at 8 a.m., opening a 
little in a pitcher. It is too remarkable a flower not to 
be sought out and admired each year, however rare. 
It is one of the errands of the walker, as well as of the 
bees, for it yields him a more celestial nectar still. It 
is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon 
this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue 
flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of 
our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to 
bloom, unless it be the witch-hazel, when, excepting 
the latter, flowers are reduced to that small Spartan 



C 97 ] 

cohort, hardy, but for the most part unobserved, 
which linger till the snow buries them, and those in- 
teresting re-appearing flowers which, though fair and 
fresh and tender, hardly delude us with the prospect 
of a new spring, and which we pass by indifferent, as 
if they only bloomed to die. Vide Bryant's verses on 
the Fringed Gentian. It is remarkable how tightly 
the gentians roll and twist up at night, as if that were 
their constant state. Probably those bees were work- 
ing late that found it necessary to perforate the 
flower. 

Journal, iv, 390. 



i: 98 ] 

FALLEN LEAVES 

For beautiful variety no crop can be compared 
with this. Here is not merely the plain yellow of the 
grains, but nearly all the colors that we know, the 
brightest blue not excepted: the early blushing 
maple, the poison sumach blazing its sins as scarlet, 
the mulberry ash, the rich chrome yellow of the pop- 
lars, the brilliant red huckleberry, with which the 
hills' backs are painted, like those of sheep. The 
frost touches them, and, with the slightest breath of 
returning day or jarring of earth's axle, see in what 
showers they come floating down ! The ground is all 
parti-colored with them. But they still live in the 
soil, whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in 
the forests that spring from it. They stoop to rise, 
to mount higher in coming years, by subtle chem- 
istry, climbing by the sap in the trees; and the sap- 
ling's first fruits thus shed, transmuted at last, may 
adorn its crown, when, in after years, it has become 
the monarch of the forest. 

It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, 
crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go 
to their graves ! how gently lay themselves down and 
turn to mould! — painted of a thousand hues, and 
fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to 
their last resting-place, light and frisky. They that 
soared so loftily, how contentedly they return to 
dust again, and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay 



I 99 ] 

at the foot of the tree, and afford nourishment to 
new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter 
on high! They teach us how to die. One wonders if 
the time will ever come when men, with their boasted 
faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and 
as ripe. 

Excursions, 269, 270. 



[ lOO ] 

LATE GREEN FERNS 

October 31, 1857. In the Lee farm swamp I see 
two kinds of ferns still green and much in fruit, 
apparently the Aspidium spinulosiim and cristatum. 
They linger thus in all moist clammy swamps under 
the bare maples and grape-vines and witch-hazels, 
and about each trickling spring which is half choked 
with fallen leaves. What means this persistent vital- 
ity, invulnerable to frost and wet? Why were these 
spared when the brakes and osmundas were stricken 
down.f* . . . Even in them I feel an argument for im- 
mortality. Death is so far from being universal. To 
my eyes they are tall and noble as palm groves, and 
always some forest nobleness seems to have its haunt 
under their umbrage. 

Journal, x, 149, 150. 

POLYPODY 

November 2, 1857. It is very pleasant and cheer- 
ful nowadays, when the brown and withered leaves 
strew the ground and almost every plant is fallen 
or withered, to come upon a patch of polypody on 
some rocky hillside in the woods, where, in the midst 
of the dry and rustling leaves, defying frost, it stands 
so freshly green and full of life. The mere greenness, 
which was not remarkable in the summer, is posi- 
tively interesting now. My thoughts are with the 



polypody a long time after my body has passed. 
The brakes, the sarsaparilla, the osmimdas, the Solo- 
mon's-seals, the lady's-shppers, have long since with- 
ered and fallen. The huckleberries and blueberries, 
too, have lost their leaves. The forest floor is cov- 
ered with a thick coat of moist brown leaves. But 
what is that perennial and springlike verdure that 
clothes the rocks, of small green plumes pointing 
various ways.'^ It is the cheerful community of the 
polypody. It survives at least as the type of vegeta- 
tion, to remind us of the spring which shall not fail. 
These are the green pastures where I browse now. 
Why is not this form copied by our sculptors instead 
of the foreign acanthus leaves and bays.^^ 

Journal, x, 153, 154. 



[ 102 ] 

NATURE'S DECORATION OF AN OLD 
STUMP 

November 4, 1857. How swift Nature is to re- 
pair the damage that man does! When he has cut 
down a tree and left only a white-topped and bleed- 
ing stump, she comes at once to the rescue with her 
chemistry, and covers it decently with a fresh coat 
of gray, and in course of time she adds a thick coat 
of green cup and bright cockscomb lichens, and it 
becomes an object of new interest to the lover of 
nature! Suppose it were always to remain a raw 
stump instead! It becomes a shelf on which this 
humble vegetation spreads and displays itself, and 
we forget the death of the larger in the life of the less. 

Journal, x, 160. 

November 8, 1858. Nature has many scenes to 
exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this 
part or that. She is constantly repainting the land- 
scape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our 
entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness, 
now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will 
surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she 
thinks so good for our eyes, like blue, that she never 
banishes it entirely, but has created evergreens. 

Each phase of nature, while not invisible, is yet not 
too distinct and obtrusive. It is there to be found 
when we look for it, but not demanding our atten- 



I 103 ] 

tion. It is like a silent but sympathizing companion 
in whose company we retain most of the advantages 
of solitude, with whom we can walk and talk, or be 
silent, naturally, without the necessity of talking in 
a strain foreign to the place. 

I go across N. Barrett's land and over the road 
beyond his house. The aspect of the Great Meadows 
is now nearly uniform, the new and exposed grass 
being nearly as brown and sere as that which was 
not cut. Thus Nature has been blending and har- 
monizing the colors here where man had interfered. 

Journal, xi, 296-98. 



[ 104 ] 
NOVEMBER WOODS 

November 8, 1850. The stillness of the woods and 
fields is remarkable at this season of the year. There 
is not even the creak of a cricket to be heard. Of 
myriads of dry shrub oak leaves, not one rustles. 
Your own breath can rustle them, yet the breath of 
heaven does not suffice to. The trees have the aspect 
of waiting for winter. The autumnal leaves have 
lost their color; they are now truly sere, dead, and 
the woods wear a sombre color. Summer and har- 
vest are over. The hickories, birches, chestnuts, no 
less than the maples, have lost their leaves. The 
sprouts, which had shot up so vigorously to repair 
the damage which the choppers had done, have 
stopped short for the winter. Everything stands 
silent and expectant. If I listen, I hear only the note 
of a chickadee, — our most common and I may say 
native bird, most identified with our forests, — or 
perchance the scream of a jay, or perchance from 
the solemn depths of these woods I hear tolling far 
away the knell of one departed. Thought rushes in 
to fill the vacuum. As you walk, however, the par- 
tridge still bursts away. The silent, dry, almost leaf- 
less, certainly fruitless woods. You wonder what 
cheer that bird can find in them. The partridge 
bursts away from the foot of a shrub oak like its own 
dry fruit, immortal bird! This sound still startles us. 
Dry goldenrods, now turned gray and white, lint 



C 105 ] 

our clothes as we walk. And the drooping, downy 
seed-vessels of the epilobium remind us of the sum- 
mer. Perchance you will meet with a few solitary 
asters in the dry fields, with a little color left. The 
sumach is stripped of everything but its cone of red 
berries. 

Journal, 11, 85. 



[ 106 ] 



FAIR HAVEN BAY THROUGH THE 
WOODS 

November 6, 1853. Climbed the wooded hill by 
Holden's spruce swamp and got a novel view of the 
river and Fair Haven Bay through the almost leaf- 
less woods. How much handsomer a river or lake 
such as ours, seen thus through a foreground of scat- 
tered or else partially leafless trees, though at a con- 
siderable distance this side of it, especially if the 
water is open, without wooded shores or isles! It 
is the most perfect and beautiful of all frames, which 
yet the sketcher is commonly careful to brush aside. 
I mean a pretty thick foreground, a view of the dis- 
tant water through the near forest, through a thou- 
sand little vistas, as we are rushing toward the for- 
mer, — that intimate mingling of wood and water 
which excites an expectation which the near and open 
view rarely realizes. We prefer that some part be 
concealed, which our imagination may navigate. 

Journal^ v, 480. 



C 107 ] 

November 21, 1850. I saw Fair Haven Pond with 
its island, and meadow between the island and the 
shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water 
in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks 
perhaps, sailing over it. I did not see how it could 
be improved. Yet I do not see what these things can 
be. I begin to see such an object when I cease to 
understand it and see that I did not realize or appre- 
ciate it before, but I get no further than this. How 
adapted these forms and colors to my eye ! A meadow 
and an island! What are these things .^^ Yet the 
hawks and the ducks keep so aloof! and Nature is so 
reserved! I am made to love the pond and the 
meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water. 

Journal, 11, 107. 



[ 108 ] 

SHRUB OAK LEAVES 

November 29, 1857. Again I am struck by the 
singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak 
leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm 
and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish- 
brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its 
whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very 
cheerful manner. So strong and cheerful, as if it 
rejoiced at the advent of winter, and exclaimed, 
"Winter, come on!" It exhibits the fashionable 
colors of the winter on the two sides of its leaves. It 
sets the fashions, colors good for bare ground or for 
snow, grateful to the eyes of rabbits and partridges. 
This is the extent of its gaudiness, red brown and 
misty white, and yet it is gay. The colors of the 
brightest flowers are not more agreeable to my eye. 

Journal, x, 214. 

December 1, 1856. The dear wholesome color 
of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm, not decaying, 
but which have put on a kind of immortality, not 
wrinkled and thin like the white oak leaves, but full- 
veined and plump, as nearer earth. Well-tanned 
leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, 
color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath, 
turned toward the late bleached and russet fields. 
What are acanthus leaves and the rest to this.'* Em- 
blem of my winter condition. I love and could em- 



[ 109 ] 

brace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of 
leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to 
me, akin to winter thoughts, and sunsets, and to all 
virtue. Covert which the hare and the partridge 
seek, and I too seek. Rigid as iron, clean as the at- 
mosphere, hardy as virtue, innocent and sweet as a 
maiden is the shrub oak. In proportion as I know 
and love it, I am natural and sound as a partridge. 
I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this after- 
noon. There was a match found for me at last. I 
fell in love with a shrub oak. 

Journal, ix, 145. 



IV. WINTER 



[ 112 ] 

A WINTER SCENE FROM LEE'S CLIFF 

December 7, 1856. Take my first skate to Fair 
Haven Pond. . . . That grand old poem called Win- 
ter is round again without any connivance of mine. 
As I sit under Lee's Cliff, where the snow is melted, 
amid sere pennyroyal and frost-bitten catnep, I look 
over my shoulder upon an arctic scene. I see with 
surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice 
speckled with snow, just as so many winters before, 
where so lately were lapsing waves or smooth reflect- 
ing water. I hear, too, the familiar belching voice of 
the pond. It seemed as if winter had come without 
any interval since midsummer, and I was prepared to 
see it flit away by the time I again looked over my 
shoulder. It was as if I had dreamed it. But I see 
that the farmers have had time to gather their har- 
vests as usual, and the seasons have revolved as 
slowly as in the first autumn of my life. The winters 
come now as fast as snowflakes. It is wonderful 
that old men do not lose their reckoning. It was 
summer, and now again it is winter. Nature loves 
this rhyme so well that she never tires of repeat- 
ing it. So sweet and wholesome is the winter, so 
simple and moderate, so satisfactory and perfect, 
that her children will never weary of it. What a 
poem! an epic in blank verse, enriched with a million 
tinkling rhymes. It is solid beauty. It has been sub- 
jected to the vicissitudes of millions of years of the 



C 113 ] 

gods, and not a single superfluous ornament remains. 
The severest and coldest of the immortal critics have 
shot their arrows at it and pruned it till it cannot be 
amended. 

Journal, ix, 165, 167, 168. 



[ 114 ] 



FROST CRYSTALS 

December 21, 1854. Walden is frozen over, ap- 
parently about two inches thick. It is very thickly 
covered with what C. calls ice-rosettes, i.e., those 
small pinches of crystallized snow, — as thickly as 
if it had snowed in that form. I think it is a sort of 
hoar frost on the ice. 

Journal, vii, 88. 

January 1, 1856. On the ice at Walden are very 
beautiful great leaf crystals in great profusion. The 
ice is frequently thickly covered with them for many 
rods. They seem to be connected with the rosettes, 
— a running together of them. They look like a loose 
web of small white feathers springing from a tuft of 
down, as if a feather bed had been shaken over the 
ice. They are, on a close examination, surprisingly 
perfect leaves, like ferns, only very broad for their 
length and commonly more on one side the midrib 
than the other. They are so thin and fragile that they 
melt under your breath while looking closely at them. 

Journal, viii, 77. 



« 




^ 


m 


■ r-- ~**"7%ijiH 












w 


i 






C 115 ] 

December 23, 1837. In the side of the high bank 
by the Leaning Hemlocks, there were some curious 
crystalhzations. Wherever the water, or other 
causes, had formed a hole in the bank, its throat and 
outer edge, like the entrance to a citadel of the olden 
time, bristled with a glistening ice armor. In one 
place you might see minute ostrich feathers, which 
seemed the waving plumes of the warriors filing into 
the fortress, in another the glancing fan-shaped 
banners of the Lilliputian host, and in another the 
needle-shaped particles, collected into bundles resem- 
bling the plumes of the pine, might pass for a pha- 
lanx of spears. The whole hill was like an immense 
quartz rock, with minute crystals sparkling from 
innumerable crannies. I tried to fancy that there 
was a disposition in these crystallizations to take the 
forms of the contiguous foliage. 

Journal, i, 21, 22. 



C 116 ] 



ARCHITECTURE OF THE SNOW 

December 25, 1851. A wind is now blowing the 
light snow into drifts, especially on the lee, now the 
south, side of the walls, the outlines of the drifts 
corresponding to the chinks in the walls and the 
eddies of the wind. The snow glides, unperceived 
for the most part, over the open fields until it reaches 
an opposite wall, which it sifts through and is blown 
over, blowing off from it like steam when seen in the 
sun. As it passes through the chinks, it does not 
drive straight onward, but curves gracefully upwards 
into fantastic shapes, somewhat like the waves 
which curve as they break upon the shore; that is, 
as if the snow that passes through a chink were one 
connected body, detained by the friction of its lower 
side. It takes the form of saddles and shells and 
porringers. It builds up a fantastic alabaster wall be- 
hind the first, — a snowy sierra. Astonishingly sharp 
and thin overhanging eaves it builds, even this dry 
snow, where it has the least suggestion from a wall 
or bank, — less than a mason ever springs his brick 
from. This is the architecture of the snow. 

Journal, iii, 154. 



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C 117 ] 

December 25, 1856. A strong wind from the 
northwest is gathering the snow into picturesque 
drifts behind the walls. As usual they resemble 
shells more than anything, sometimes prows of ves- 
sels, also the folds of a white napkin or counterpane 
dropped over a bonneted head. There are no such 
picturesque snow-drifts as are formed behind loose 
and open stone walls. 

Journal, ix, 197. 



TRACKS IN THE SNOW 

January 1, 1854. The snow is the great betrayer. 
We might expect to find in the snow the footprint of 
a life superior to our own, of which no zoology takes 
cognizance. Is there no trace of a nobler life than that 
of an otter or an escaped convict to be looked for in 
the snow.'^ Shall we suppose that that is the only life 
that has been abroad in the night .^^ It is only the 
savage that can see the track of no higher life than an 
otter. Why do the vast snow plains give us pleasure, 
the twilight of the bent and half -buried woods .'^ Is 
not all there consonant with virtue, justice, purity, 
courage, magnanimity.'^ Are we not cheered by the 
sight.^ And does not all this amount to the track of a 
higher life than the otter's, a life which has not gone 
by and left a footprint merely, but is there with its 
beauty, its music, its perfume, its sweetness, to ex- 
hilarate and recreate us.^^ Where there is a perfect 
government of the world according to the highest 
laws, is there no trace of intelligence there, whether 
in the snow or the earth, or in ourselves.? No other 
trail but such as a dog can smell. ^^ Is there none which 
an angel can detect and follow .^^ None to guide a man 
on his pilgrimage, which water will not conceal.? Is 
there no odor of sanctity to be perceived.? Is its trail 
too old.? Have mortals lost the scent.? The great game 
for mighty hunters as soon as the first snow falls is 
Purity, for, earlier than any rabbit or fox, it is abroad, 



L "9 ] 

and its trail may be detected by curs of lowest de- 
gree. Did this great snow come to reveal the track 
merely of some timorous hare, or of the Great Hare, 
whose track no hunter has seen? Is there no trace 
nor suggestion of Purity to be detected? If one could 
detect the meaning of the snow, would he not be on 
the trail of some higher life that has been abroad in 
the night? A life which, pursued, does not earth it- 
self, does not burrow downward but upward, which 
takes not to the trees but to the heavens as its home, 
which the hunter pursues with winged thoughts and 
aspirations, — these the dogs that tree it, — rally- 
ing his pack with the bugle notes of undying faith, 
and returns with some worthier trophy than a fox's 
tail, a life which we seek, not to destroy it, but to save 
our own? 

Journal, vi, 43, 44. 



AFTER THE ICE STORM i 

January 1, 1853. This morning we have some- 
thing between ice and frost on the trees, etc. The 
whole earth, as last night, but much more, is encased 
in ice, which on the plowed fields makes a singular icy 
coat a quarter of an inch or more in thickness. This 
frozen drizzle, collected around the slightest cores, 
gives prominence to the least withered herbs and 
grasses. Where yesterday was a plain, smooth field, 
appears now a teeming crop of fat, icy herbage. The 
stems of the herbs on their north sides are enlarged 
from ten to a hundred times. What a crash of jewels 
as you walk! The most careless walker, who never 
deigned to look at these humble weeds before, cannot 
help observing them now. The drooping birches 
along the edges of woods are the most feathery, 
fairy-like ostrich plumes of the trees, and the color 
of their trunks increases the delusion. The weight 
of the ice gives to the pines the forms which northern 
trees, like the firs, constantly wear, bending and 
twisting the branches; for the twigs and plumes of 
the pines, being frozen, remain as the wind held 
them, and new portions of the trunk are exposed. 

^ An ice-storm such as Thoreau describes so intimately is by no means 
an annual occurrence in Concord. Indeed, in his entire journal Thoreau 
mentions only one other similar phenomenon. It required some years of 
"watchful waiting" before the opportunity arrived to secure photo- 
graphs illustrating Thoreau's description. The single view herewith re- 
produced gives only a bare suggestion of the beauty of the outdoor world 
under such conditions. H. W. G. 



L 121 ] 

Seen from the north, there is no greenness in the 
pines, and the character of the tree is changed. The 
willows along the edge of the river look like sedge 
in meadows. The sky is overcast, and a fine snowy 
hail and rain is falling, and these ghost-like trees 
make a scenery which reminds you of Spitzbergen. 
I see now the beauty of the causeway, by the bridge 
alders below swelling into the road, overtopped by 
willows and maples. The fine grasses and shrubs in 
the meadow rise to meet and mingle with the droop- 
ing willows, and the whole make an indistinct impres- 
sion like a mist, and between this the road runs 
toward those white ice-clad ghostly or fairy trees in 
the distance, — toward spirit-land. 

Journal, iv, 436-38. 



C 122 ] 



HEAVY SNOW ON PITCH PINES 

January 7, 1852. This afternoon, in dells of the 
wood and on the lee side of the woods, where the 
wind has not disturbed it, the snow still lies on the 
trees as richly as I ever saw it. It was just moist 
enough to stick. The pitch pines wear it Jbest; their 
plumes hang down like the feathers of the ostrich 
or the tail of the cassowary, so purely white, — I 
am sorry that I cannot say snowy white, for in purity 
it is like nothing but itself. From contrast with the 
dark needles and stems of the trees, whiter than ever 
on the ground. The trees are bent under the weight 
into a great variety of postures, — arches, etc. Their 
branches and tops are so consolidated by the bur- 
den of snow, and they stand in such new attitudes, 
the tops often like canopies or parasols, agglomer- 
ated, that they remind me of the pictures of palms 
and other Oriental trees. Sometimes the lower 
limbs of the pitch pine, under such plumes and cano- 
pies, bear each their ridge of snow, crossing and 
interlacing each other like lattice-work, so that you 
cannot look more than a rod into the rich tracery. 

Journal, iii, 177. 




t 



[ 123 ] 

January 30, 1841. The trees covered with snow 
admit a very plain and clean light, but not brilliant, 
as if through windows of ground glass; a sort of white 
darkness it is, all of the sun's splendor that can be 
retained. 

You glance up these paths, closely imbowered by 
bent trees, as through the side aisles of a cathedral, 
and expect to hear a choir chanting from their depths. 
You are never so far in them as they are far before 
you. Their secret is where you are not and where 
your feet can never carry you. 

The snow falls on no two trees alike, but the forms 
it assumes are as various as those of the twigs and 
leaves which receive it. They are, as it were, pre- 
determined by the genius of the tree. So one divine 
spirit descends alike on all, but bears a peculiar fruit 
in each. The divinity subsides on all men, as the 
snowflakes settle on the fields and ledges and takes 
the form of the various clefts and surfaces on which 
it lodges. 

Journal, i, 184, 185. 



[ 124 ] 

THE SWAMP IN WINTER 

January 10, 1856. I love to wade and flounder 
through the swamp now, these bitter cold days when 
the snow lies deep on the ground, and I need travel 
but little way from the town to get to a Nova Zembla 
solitude, — to wade through the swamps, all snowed 
up, untraeked by man, into which the fine dry snow 
is still drifting till it is even with the tops of the 
water andromeda and half-way up the high blue- 
berry bushes. I penetrate to islets inaccessible in 
summer, my feet slumping to the sphagnum far out 
of sight beneath, where the alder berry glows yet 
and the azalea buds, and perchance a single tree 
sparrow or a chickadee lisps by my side, where there 
are few tracks even of wild animals; perhaps only a 
mouse or two have burrowed up by the side of some 
twig, and hopped away in straight lines on the sur- 
face of the light, deep snow, as if too timid to delay, 
to another hole by the side of another bush; and a 
few rabbits have run in a path amid the blueberries 
and alders about the edge of the swamp. This is 
instead of a Polar Sea expedition and going after 
Franklin. There is but little life and but few objects, 
it is true. We are reduced to admire buds, even like 
the partridges, and bark, like the rabbits and mice, 
— the great yellow and red forward-looking buds of 
the azalea, the plump red ones of the blueberry, and 
the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda, 



[ 125 ] 

sleeping along its stem, the speckled black alder, the 
rapid-growing dogwood, the pale-brown and cracked 
blueberry, etc. Even a little shining bud which lies 
sleeping behind its twig and dreaming of spring, per- 
haps half concealed by ice, is object enough. I feel 
myself upborne on the andromeda bushes beneath 
the snow, as on a springy basketwork, then down I 
go up to my middle in the deep but silent snow, which 
has no sympathy with my mishap. Beneath the level 
of this snow how many sweet berries will be hanging 
next August! 

Journal, viii, 99, 100. 



[ 126 ] 

A LODGING SNOW 

January 20, 1855. In many instances the snow 
had lodged on trees yesterday in just such forms as 
a white napkin or counterpane dropped on them 
would take, — protuberant in the middle, with 
many folds and dimples. An ordinary leafless bush 
supported so much snow on its twigs — a perfect 
maze like a whirligig, though not in one solid mass 
— that you could not see through it. Sometimes the 
snow on the bent pitch pines made me think of rams' 
or elephants' heads, ready to butt you. In particular 
places, standing on their snowiest side, the woods 
were incredibly fair, white as alabaster. Indeed, the 
young pines reminded you of the purest statuary, 
and the stately full-grown ones towering around 
affected you as if you stood in a titanic sculptor's 
studio, so purely and delicately white, transmitting 
the light, their dark trunks all concealed. And in 
many places, where the snow lay on withered oak 
leaves between you and the light, various delicate 
fawn-colored and cinnamon tints, blending with 
the white, still enhanced the beauty. 

I doubt if I can convey an idea^ of the appearance 
of the woods yesterday, as you stood in their midst 
and looked round on their boughs and twigs laden 

^ This is Thoreau's conclusion after more than ten pages of attempted 
description of the beauty of Concord woods under their burden of snow. 
Needless to say, no photograph, or series of photographs, can be more 
successful. H. W. G. 



[ 127 ] 

with snow. It seemed as if there could have been 
none left to reach the ground. These countless zig- 
zag white arms crossing each other at every possible 
angle completely closed up the view, like a light drift 
within three or four rods on every side. The win- 
triest prospect imaginable. 

Journal, vii, 122, 123, 128. 



[ 128 ] 

THE BROOK IN WINTER 

January 12, 1855. Perhaps what most moves us 
in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. 
How we leap by the side of the open brooks! What 
beauty in the running brooks! What Hfe! What 
society! The cold is merely superficial; it is summer 
still at the core, far, far within. 

Journal, vii, 112. 

January 31, 1852. I observed this afternoon, on 
the Turnpike, that where it drifts over the edge of a 
brook or a ditch, the snow being damp as it falls, 
what does not adhere to the sharp edge of the drift 
falls on the dead weeds and shrubs and forms a 
drapery like a napkin or a white tablecloth hanging 
down with folds and tassels or fringed border. Or 
perhaps the fresh snow merely rounds and whitens 
thus the old cores. 

Journal, iii, 260. 

THE RIVER AS A WINTER HIGHWAY 

January 20, 1856. It is now good walking on the 
river, for, though there has been no thaw since the 
snow came, a great part of it has been converted into 
snow ice by sinking the old ice beneath the water, 
and the crust of the rest is stronger than in the fields, 
because the snow is so shallow and has been so moist. 



C 129 ] 

The river is thus an advantage as a highway, not only 
in summer and when the ice is bare in the winter, 
but even when the snow Hes very deep in the fields. 
It is invaluable to the walker, being now not only 
the most interesting, but, excepting the narrow and 
unpleasant track in the highways, the only practi- 
cable route. The snow never lies so deep over it as 
elsewhere, and, if deep, it sinks the ice and is soon 
converted into snow ice to a great extent, beside 
being blown out of the river valley. Here, where 
you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walk- 
ing than elsewhere in the winter. 

Journal, viii, 121. 



[ 130 ] 
THE TRACKS OF A FOX 

Perhaps of all our untamed quadrupeds, the fox i 
has obtained the widest and most familiar reputation, 
from the time of Pilpay and iEsop to the present day. 
His recent tracks still give variety to a winter's walk. 
I tread in the steps of the fox that has gone before me 
by some hours, or which perhaps I have started, with 
such a tiptoe of expectation as if I were on the trail 
of the Spirit itself which resides in the wood, and 
expected soon to catch it in its lair. I am curious to 
know what has determined its graceful curvatures, 
and how surely they were coincident with the fluc- 
tuations of some mind. I know which way a mind 
wended, what horizon it faced, by the setting of these 
tracks, and whether it moved slowly or rapidly, by 
their greater or less intervals and distinctness; for the 
swiftest step leaves yet a lasting trace. Sometimes 
you will see the trails of many together, and where 
they have gamboled and gone through a hundred 
evolutions, which testify to a singular listlessness 
and leisure in nature. 

When I see a fox run across the pond on the snow, 
with the carelessness of freedom, or at intervals trace 
his course in the sunshine along the ridge of a hill, I 
give up to him sun and earth as to their true proprie- 

' In spite of numerous fcx-hunters, with their packs of trained hounds, 
Reynard manages to survive in Concord, and it is still true — though to 
a less degree than in Thoreau's day — that "his recent tracks give variety 
to a winter's walk." H. W. G. 



[ 131 ] 

tor. He does not go in the sun, but it seems to follow 
him, and there is a visible sympathy between him and 
it. Sometimes, when the snow lies light and but five 
or six inches deep, you may give chase and come up 
with one on foot. In such a case he will show a re- 
markable presence of mind, choosing only the safest 
direction, though he may lose ground by it. Not- 
withstanding his fright, he will take no step which is 
not beautiful. His pace is a sort of leopard canter, 
as if he were in no wise impeded by the snow, but 
were husbanding his strength all the while. He runs 
as though there were not a bone in his back. 

Excursions, 117, 118. 



ICICLE "ORGAN-PIPES" 

February 14, 1852. At the Cliffs, the rocks are 
in some places covered with ice; and the least incli- 
nation beyond a perpendicular in their faces is be- 
trayed by the formation of icicles at once, which hang 
perpendicularly, like organ pipes, in front of the 
rock. They are now conducting downward the melt- 
ing ice and snow, which drips from their points with 
a slight clinking and lapsing sound, but when the 
sun has set will freeze there and add to the icicles' 
length. Where the icicles have reached the ground 
and are like thick pillars, they have a sort of annu- 
lar appearance, somewhat like the successive swells 
on the legs of tables and on bed-posts. There is per- 
haps a harmony between the turner's taste and the 
law of nature in this instance. The shadow of the 
water flowing or pulsating behind this transparent 
icy crust or these stalactites in the sun imparts a 
semblance of life to the whole. 

Journal, iii, 303. 

NORTH BRANCH NEAR HARRINGTON'S 

February 27, 1852. The main river is not yet 
open but in very few places, but the North Branch, 
which is so much more rapid, is open near Tarbell's 
and Harrington's, where I walked to-day, and, flow- 
ing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, 




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[ 133 ] 

sparkles in the clear, cool air, — a silvery sparkle 
as from a stream that would not soil the sky. 

Half the ground is covered with snow. It is a mod- 
erately cool and pleasant day near the end of winter. 
We have almost completely forgotten summer. This 
restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fet- 
ters, and as I stand looking up it westward for half a 
mile, where it winds slightly- under a high bank, its 
surface is lit up here and there with a fine-grained 
silvery sparkle which makes the river appear some- 
thing celestial, — more than a terrestrial river, — 
which might have suggested that which surrounded 
the shield in Homer. If rivers come out of their icy 
prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too re- 
sume my spring life with joy and hope.^ Have I no 
hopes to sparkle on the surface of life's current.'* 

Journal, iii, 322. 



C 134 ] 



WINTER 

When winter fringes every bough 

With his fantastic wreath, 
And puts the seal of silence now 

Upon the leaves beneath; 

When every stream in its penthouse 

Goes gurgling on its way, 
And in his gallery the mouse 

Nibbleth the meadow hay; 

Methinks the summer still is nigh, 

And lurketh underneath, 
As that same meadow mouse doth lie 

Snug in that last year's heath. 

And if perchance the chickadee 

Lisp a faint note anon. 
The snow is summer's canopy. 

Which she herself put on. 

Fair blossoms deck the cheerful trees. 
And dazzling fruits depend; 

The north wind sighs a summer breeze, 
The nipping frosts to fend. 



Z 135 ] 

Bringing glad tidings unto me, 

The while I stand all ear, 
Of a serene eternity, 

Which need not winter fear. 

Excursions, 176, 177. 



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